Paradiso: In Retrospect

I keep stopping myself from doing anything relaxing because the reflex of needing to work on Paradiso is still within me, but as it is published I have instead been doing some reflecting on the overall journey of writing it. Lots of lessons learned, lots of nights wanting to pull my hair out.

There are a good 40 thousand words of Paradiso that were written right on the tail of Dierock 88, and the rest, slowly but surely over the course of nearly two years. Large changes in my personal life caused a lot of stop and go, and then when my schedule finally opened up, I felt overwhelmed. It was a struggle, and quickly becoming longer than anything I'd ever written! At one point, Paradiso was on the mark to 170k words, but I was biting off more than I could chew, and so I scaled it back, and pushed what could be sacrificed off for book three.

Suffice to say, I am relieved to have crossed the finished line. Was it conventional? No. I don't do conventional very well. I skipped on the development edit (due to lack of funds, not lack of need) and did the formatting myself. This all added up to far more stress, and the more I re-read what I had written, the more I was hating all of it. Eventually, I had to take a break entirely from it-- perhaps two weeks or so-- and this allowed me to finally enjoy Paradiso for myself. Once I recovered that feeling of liking what I was reading, the spark to sort out the work still needed came easily.

Will I have regrets about Paradiso? Probably. It was a messy writing process, and I've learned a lot since it began. With that said, I am still very proud of the book it became, the moments, the characters, and the overall story. I'm proud I was able to make it happen, and I am dying to get feedback (good and bad!) as I press on to my next projects.

As for book three, which is currently still unnamed, I can't wait to take my lessons learned from the previous two books and continue to improve!

Thank you everyone who enjoyed Dierock 88 enough to give Paradiso a chance, and I hope it meets your expectations. :)