I’m a little over halfway through the draft of Love and the Darkness.  That means that there are less than ten thousand words left, since it is plotted out at 20,000.  I’m finding it harder and harder to write right now, and it’s not because of this particular story.  It’s because school is getting closer and closer– two more days off as I write this.  Hopefully by the time you read this though,  I will have finished those 10K words and have it on the release schedule.

When the book is ready, there will be a release date several weeks after the announcement.  I’ll be using Smashwords’ new preorder system.  That will let me get it all arranged and yet give me time enough make sure that it is properly finished.  I was really upset with myself about His Robot Wife: Patience is a Virtue.  I was in such a hurry to get it out that I sent it with errors.  I’m not going to let that happen again.  Professionalism– that’s my new watchword this year for school and its going to be the same with my writing.  Readers deserve nothing less.

Unlike my other stories, Love and the Darkness has essentially one main character.  This is at the same time easier and more difficult to write.  You can stay in the mind of one character, which is nice.  But characters can get inside your head too and when that happens, it’s nice to be able to switch to a different one.  My character in Love and the Darkness is Charles Bentley Howard.  He’s sort of a wealthy, nerdy character, and so his first name is a tip of the hat to Charles Dexter Ward, the H.P. Lovecraft character, though this is not really a Lovecraftian horror story.

All the characters in Love and the Darkness either interact with Charles Bentley Howard, or they are related to him– or both.  There are several female characters, and I have had trouble with their names from the beginning.  I have already changed several of them and I don’t think I have the final versions yet.  Whatever they finally end up, watch this space for a release announcement.  As I mentioned before, Love and the Darkness will be a free ebook.