The City of Arches, and CHAI Montreal

So NaNoWriMo 2014 has come and gone. I finished my first draft of The City of Arches and am quite happy with how it turned out. I started this post many times and it didn't work. My kids got sick and it is always difficult when this happens. It seems that with having triplets, once one gets sick, the others shortly follow. They are at the age that they don't understand how to stop the spread of their germs. I also have no self-control. When I see them all sickly and miserable, I have to cuddle and coddle them. Then, of course, I get sick. Ah well.

This book was extremely difficult for me to write. I kept second guessing everything I was doing. Chronologically, it takes place before the events in Sitnalta, yet it is definitely the third book in the series. I kept reading and rereading everything that I had put into Sitnalta and The Kingdom Thief to make sure I wasn't contradicting what I had previously written. Yet I kept having ideas for great plot elements that I could not do. I know that readers are very good at finding inconsistencies in writers' work. 

Another thing was that I kept questioning whether or not readers would WANT to read something that takes place before the events they're already aware of. I kept calling my brother Brian and asking him "Are you sure?" "Is this really a good idea?" He kept telling me to go on, and as my foremost Sitnalta fan and cheerleader, I believed him.

In other news,  I was just interviewed by Lisa Winston the host of the radio programme CHAI Montreal, their Holiday Spirit Show. The interview airs this Sunday at 10:00 p.m. and you can listen live to it on their website: CFMB.ca (just click LISTEN LIVE). We talk about writing, folklore, family, The Hadariah Chronicles, and Sitnalta. (PS. Books make awesome holiday gifts!)