Moving Right Along

I'm going to attempt at being more proactive about this blog. We'll see how long that lasts and how good I am at it.
I've finished the massive rewrite on my first book. There's a sense of satisfaction with that. Looking back at the better written start of my series is a nice accomplishment. It was a strange experience though. You know, I keep telling my friends this simple fact: I wrote my first draft of End Game: Genesis when I was 19. Then I took four years off.
Literally. I took four years off. I tried to write the second book about two years later, but then I was stupid and lost my flash drive in a crowded Philadelphia Phillies stadium in the middle of summer. I presume it was stepped on, crushed, and then thrown out.
At the time it was the worst thing possible. Everything I had written recently had been saved on that flash drive. Because somehow, I trusted the flash drive more than my laptop or desktop computer. Silly me. I learned a lot from that experience. One was that whether I liked it or not, God wasn't going to let me forget about what I had written. I was able to recall nearly everything I wrote and lost on that flash drive.
Two, sometimes things like that happen for a reason. Seriously, they do. What I had originally come up with for my second book would have been awful. I had to learn how to write crappy short stories a million times over and think I had no talent before I could write a proper second novel. It also took the help of my very good fried Dana Ardison.
Now, it really was a long time since I had written when I got her text message that changed everything. I remember I was coming back from somewhere, maybe errands of some sort. Anyway, I was pulling up to my house and my phone began buzzing in my pocket. When I checked the text message, it was from Dana telling me how much she loved my first book and wanted to read the second one right away. I didn't really believe her though, despite her adamant pleas of a second book.
Then about a week later I got my birthday present from her, in which I found an envelope containing a poem she had written about my novel.
Then a few months later, I spat out two books.
After a four year hiatus from writing a novel length item, I wrote two books and rewrote my first within seven months. Granted, the two I wrote will need editing, but they're fairly good. A good friend of mine mentioned that despite having been written in a few months, they were coherent and she didn't know how I had done it.
I don't know how I did it. I just did. I've spent four years mulling things over, coming up with new ideas, new plot developments, new characters. I took the story places I had never thought we'd go, and somehow we're at the doorstep of my fourth book.
You know, this promises to be a good end of my college career.
Currently Writing: Alaster
Currently Reading: Eragon by Christopher Paolini and The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
Currently Listening to: "The Grey Havens" by Howard Shore