Let me skip away from the title of this post for JUST a moment and then I will jump right back on task. I promise.

When I first started writing THE BEHOLDER, it was kind of a side step to what I had really been wanting to do. Don’t get me wrong, I was excited about it and I thought the idea was pretty unique and had a lot of potential. But REALLY, I was more excited about the series idea (ELEMENTS) that I had been trying to write but was having a hard time plotting out. I had already spent months with those characters inside my head and they felt like the most awesomest cast EVER. To me, at least. I let a few CPs read the first 6 or so chapters I had churned out and a lot of the feedback was very positive and complimentary. But as a beginner writer, trying to tackle a series was a daunting task. I spent all of my time trying to figure out how each book would play out and how the characters would change from the beginning to the end of 300,000 words or so. It was mostly frustrating and sometimes insane. I felt completely and irrefutably over my head.

But I was determined to be a writer. It was in my blood. I knew I had the passion for it and I wasn’t going to let this hole I dug keep me down. So when I got the idea for THE BEHOLDER, I made the very difficult choice of setting aside ELEMENTS and all the wonderful characters I had created and started in on a new idea, a new cast. At first I didn’t know them as well but I came to know them. And I came to love them. And it was a lot easier for me to wrap my head around an idea that would only span one single book. Or would it? Continue reading →