I’ve written 31,050 words on Nadia’s Children now. That’s well over one-quarter of the expected length of your average genre novel. And yet, I don’t know where I’m going. Typically I have some ending in mind. Maybe I don’t wind up with that exact ending, but I have a goal and write toward it, hitting something logical at the end. I knew where Shara would end. Same with Ulrik and with the two novels coming from Bad Moon Books and the shorter books I’ve published. But with this one, I can’t "see" more than a few scenes ahead of where I am, and sometimes I can’t even see that far. Like yesterday. I needed something dramatic to happen because I’d had a couple of pretty low key chapters. Suddenly I’m writing in a character we haven’t seen since the first half of Ulrik and now she’s going to play a bigger role.

I have eleven point-of-view characters! Fortunately, they are usually at least in pairs, if not bigger groups, so it’s manageable, but I think that shows how easily this book could spiral out of control and become a real mess.

I’ve tried doing some outlining, and I just can’t. What’s kind of bothering me is not being sure if I don’t know where I’m going, or if I know and just can’t admit it. I’ve been living with some of these characters for 17 years. Too many of them have already died. With what I introduced a few chapters back, right now there seems to be limited resolutions for some of the familiar characters. I guess we’ll see.