The Dark and Forbidding Land

After finishing Tesla’s Stepdaughters, I jumped into writing book two of Senta and the Steel Dragon (which I had decided was the name of the series).  It was challenging because I was writing a new story set between two already written ones.  For some series, this might not have been a problem, but in Senta books, lots of characters die.

As I wrote, I kept combining things from the outline and throwing some things out because they would mess with the later, already written, stories.  In the end, the book was about 2/3 as long as originally planned, but I liked it.  The Dark and Forbidding Land became my fourth book published in 2010.

The Drache Girl

By the time I got ready to publish book three of Senta and the Steel Dragon, it had been finished for almost three years.  I went through a quick revision pass, changing very little before publishing it.  Like all of the books in the series, I had a hard time with the title.  I had settled on The Sorceress’s Apprentice for years, but many of my friends didn’t like it.  They thought it could be confused with Disney’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. So, it became The Drache Girl.

His Robot Wife

By the end of 2010, I had five books for sale, none of which were lighting up the best-sellers list.  Meanwhile His Robot Girlfriend continued to be downloaded thousands of times per week.  I decided I would write a sequel.  However, unlike just about every other book I’ve written, I didn’t have a strong story before I started.  I crafted an outline, but I was never as invested in the plot as I was with other books.  I did like writing the characters again though, and it became His Robot Wife.  By its third month, it had sold more than all my other books had ever sold all put together.  Each month saw more and more sales, and for a moment, I thought it would just keep going.  However, after about six months the sales began to quickly drop.