Friends,

Welcome to yet another week – another opportunity – to achieve greatness. In the words of Leonidas, “Prepare for glory!” Let’s get into today’s content…

The Faces of the War Collection

Toward the end of last week, I came across some things I had jotted down while doing the skeleton planning for Book Three, and it got me thinking. After some careful consideration of historical facts and other things I had discovered in my research, I decided that it was best to revamp some of the planning I had done and change up the story outline just a bit. Now that that is done, I can move forward with more confidence that what I’ll be writing will be more realistic in appeal and closer along the lines of what actually could’ve happened.

That’s part of the trick with writing historical fiction: everything little event that occurred in the past doesn’t have a personal account to go with it. That’s just a fact historical writers must deal with. So when writing, the gaps in what could have happened are filled with the writer’s creativity fueled by contextual knowledge. In other words, the writer creates an event in the story that contains people, actions, and so on that could have existed at the time.

That’s what I do with my stories when there isn’t much substance to certain things I want to put into my story. With Resistant and Unguarded, my first two books, this method of writing was executed fairly well I think. In my third book, I am currently expanding and experimenting with this method in the second half of the manuscript, and I must say that it’s a fun thing to do. And I think that’s part of what writing should be about – experimenting and trying new things to see how far you can take yourself in your work. I should add that the developments in the story with which I’m experimenting are rather bold, mostly because the events that are taking place very well could have happened and it’s very hard to tell either way.

The word count is approaching 25K in Book Three and I’m about to send the word to my cover designer to get things rolling. As of now, I’m resetting the tentative release date for mid- to late-September. I’ll be writing as much as I can throughout the rest of the summer, and hopefully I’ll be able to produce a quality book to add to the first two.

YouTube

If you haven’t seen my videos on my writing process, you can easily find them on my channel. Since finishing my writing process videos, I’ve switched gears and am now doing weekly vlogs by recording footage throughout the week and posting a video on Friday.

Please subscribe to my channel and join me on my journey through both my personal and writing lives. And if you have family or friends who might be interested in me and my work, please pass the word along. I enjoy getting to meet new people!

And if you want to go a step further and get more out of the content I produce, you can join my mailing list by clicking this link and filling in the information. I send out a newsletter vie email every couple of weeks, and it includes details about my projects, fun facts, Q&A posts, and much more. It’s easy to do and fun to be a part of!

Other News

I have hinted before that there are other projects on my plate behind the scenes, but I haven’t really elaborated on that point. I’m not going to right now, either (sorry), but I will tell you that a pretty cool thing is in the works and in the coming weeks I’ll share with you about it.

That’s just about all I have for right now in terms of news. Thank you for your interest in my work and for following my blog. I truly appreciate it!

Until next time,

-Eli