Writing on the sequel to Forsaken: Searching for God's Fingerprints is going slow, but good.
I have not had the discipline I had during the writing of Forsaken. While writing that novel, my first, I was home alone with not much else to do. I was not so involved in community groups, was not so involved in riding my bike and my wife was working.
Now I am president of the Douglas Land Conservancy, in charge of my Rotary club's Student of the Month program, involved in two other Rotary projects and I have increased my bike riding to between 4,000 and 5,000 miles a year. In June my wife retired and is home pretty much full time.
All of this has meant I have a lot more distractions than in the past. If I am going to write at the same pace I did before, I am going to have to be much more disciplined with my time. I need to get good block of time, four to five hours at a time, four or five days a week.
On the other hand, I have been making progress on the sequel, tentatively titled Forgiven. I have written more than 27,000 words and sketched out the three major plot lines I plan to use throughout the book.
Using the end of Forsaken as a starting point, I am bringing back most of the major characters of that work. I have already introduced a new villain, in a much different role than The Rev. Paul Larchmont. This time it is not religion that will be the primary obstacle for my hero, Jarrod McKinley, to overcome. Instead he will have to fight another common foe to mankind, the corporate giant which can rule our lives and our culture in so many ways.
Also I have introduced a new element that will make the story more of a true science fiction work. I'm not going to reveal what that is until much later, perhaps not until the book is released.
This new element, however, will add some elements to the origination theories of mankind that I think my readers will find interesting. These elements will combine religion, myth, popular fiction and some science.
But, rest assured, as the fall progresses to winter, there will be fewer yard chores and projects, much less time spent riding the bike, and more time devoted to writing. I have set a goal of getting the first draft of the novel written by April of next year, 2013. From that point, it will probably take me six months to get the research  completed, the rewrites done and then done again.
A good timeline would be able to turn it over to a copy editors by about July or August of next year.
Here's hoping. In the meantime, I have to do more to publicize Forsaken. How to do that, I am struggling with.
I now have the novel in two large local independent book stores in Boulder and Denver, a website, I have a Facebook page and mention any developments on that page and on Twitter and LinkedIn.
What else can I do? That is what I need to discover. Getting involved in a writer's group or a Sci Fi group would be good.
Just more things to squeeze into my days.