If you follow me on social media at all, you’ll know that The Years Between Us is finally to a proofreader who will take a quick look for typos and inconsistencies.

Now that I can almost wash my hands of that book, I can put all my focus on my Wedding Party series.

Jared and Leah came in at about 67,000 words. I was a bit disappointed as I like my books to fall around 70-72,000 words. I always lose some during editing as well, so while I edit and try to plump up scenes that feel sparse, I’ll be keeping an eye on what I delete and make sure I add where appropriate.

I was able to open the file last night and I started reading from the beginning. I wrote half of it before my surgery and half of it after. My surgery was back in January and I stubbornly finished it while in recovery. So I know there’s room for improvement, especially to the second half when I was hurting, but I was too impatient to wait before writing more.

I don’t like writing in chunks, so I feel like this book isn’t “together” though that probably isn’t the case.

Anyway, as I go through this book, I’ll be looking for a few things:

1. Consistency. I always look for this anyway, but it’s more important with this book as there is so much time between me writing the first half and the second half.
2. Places I can pump up word count. I wrote this book in a hurry. While I don’t advocate filling your book full of fluff just to make a word count, I already know of three scenes I can add to that will make the book better. If that doesn’t bring me to my desired word count, so be it, but it will sound better, too, and that’s all that matters.
3. Where the second books fits in. Call it poor planning or brilliance (I prefer brilliance) book one and book two are going to overlap. There’s nothing I can do about it. How am I going to pull that off? Luckily, I knew that was going to happen before I started writing book one.

The characters are in Rocky Point, Minnesota for a wedding. The bride and groom aren’t main characters because they are already together, but they do pop up now and then as strong secondary characters. Anyway, everyone is in town for two weeks. If I wanted all four books to take place within those two weeks, my couples would be falling in love and having their stories told in a couple of days. And while a countdown plot like that works for a thriller, it doesn’t make good sense for a romance because it’s hard to carry out a complete character arc. People need time to fall in love. I love the “love at first sight” trope, but to make the story realistic, characters need time and space.

Book three will cover the week of the wedding and book four will cover time after.

James Fox. Not 100% how I pictured him, but have you ever looked at stock photos of men in tuxes? Some of them are downright creepy!

I lucked out there because the two people who are featured in book four live in Rocky Point, and it won’t matter if the wedding is over to complete their story. And the way the books were plotted out, not everyone leaves Rocky Point after the wedding. That might have been luck or good planning, but either way, I feel good about how the rest of the series will go.

But for now, while I edit book one, I’ll just need to keep track of where everyone is so book two is accurate.

This isn’t unlike writing The Corner of 1700 Hamilton. Ben and Lila’s stories were split down the middle, and they only intersected a handful of times.

This is how I pictured Marnie Zimmerman, the bride. 

The bride’s time isn’t all accounted for, as the primary focus of book one is Leah and Jared, so Callie will get some bride-time in book two. I didn’t want it to feel weird to the reader that Leah was able to have bride time, but no one else does. But James, the groom won’t be spending time with Callie’s love interest because he isn’t in the wedding party.

I’m really excited to start book two, but I’ll finish plumping up book one first and getting that one almost ready to go, as I’m not thrilled to be working on two projects at once again.

So that’s a short update. I’ve been trying to keep everyone posted on how the series is going because I plan to rapid-release them, and I’m hoping to get them all written by the end of October or so so I can have time create covers and do the formatting. There won’t be a book released after The Years Between Us for a while, so it’s important to me that you all know I’m still writing!

Hopefully I can release Jared and Leah in the winter of this year, and release the rest of the books going into 2020.

We’ll see. You know what they say about good intentions.

Check back with me to see what else is going on in Rocky Point, Minnesota, release news with The Years Between Us, and my slow slow slow progress going wide!

Until next time!