A friend once asked me how long it takes to write a book. When I told him the month’s long process involved he stared at me in disbelief. To him, writing was a simple matter. Put words on a page and hit the publish button.

Oh, to dream.

I do believe I move pretty quickly through the process. I like seeing a clear progression, hitting a certain goal, week by week until completion.

Then there’s the DSA.

In the beginning…

In 2014 I wrote a book called Hench. Someday you might read it. No one ever has. It was my first attempt at a humorous first-person heist novel. It’s the longest single work I’ve ever put together and took me seven months to craft.

Hench burned me out for a bit.

I saw how much time it took and realized I needed a fresh approach. During that time I was researching self-publishing, still unsure how and when to take the leap. I stumbled on a book called Write. Publish. Repeat. It was a great look at how to set a pace and put out a stream of fiction in serialized fashion.

I fell in love with the concept. Television has always been my go-to for entertainment. I love the weekly installment and the connective tissue required to build a season of stories. Cliffhangers, subplots, everything about the medium appeals to me as a writer.

I wanted to bring that to my writing.

Coming up with the DSA

In the fall of 2014, I started mapping out seasons of stories in an attempt to find the right match for my sensibilities. They started out small, little snippets of action followed by nothing. They went nowhere.

In October I stumbled on the DSA. I thought about every show I ever loved. From The X-Files to Babylon 5 and what was essential to each one. What made me come back week after week to view the next installment. I made a list and in the middle of my discovery phase the DSA poured out of me.

I spent the month building the organization, the format and the players involved. Every aspect had to have a purpose, every piece had to mean something to the overall structure.

By the end of the year I had my first episode completed. The Clearing. I built it exactly as a television show would. This was the pilot. It had to pop so there were explosions, a bigger threat, a bigger cast even. Every decision came from that place of how would I do it on the screen and how could I translate it to prose.

The next five books took all of 2015 to write. My second daughter was born in March so she can take some of the blame on that one, but most of it fell on me for not quite knowing how to manage the series as a whole. And for not understanding the narrative from start to finish.

Not completely.

Publication snag…

The DSA was meant to be my launching point as an author. After 15 months of drafting and editing, I was ready.

My publishing company was formed in January 2016. Eleven Ten Publishing. Named after my girls’ birthdays. During that process, the investment required to have an LLC, the DSA suddenly went from the top of my list to the bottom of my pile.

I didn’t have the capital to edit, format or designs covers for six books and I was unwilling to stagger releases. The intention was always to be a seasonal structure, to release timely in order to capitalize on reader excitement.

So the DSA went away…

2018

I finished A Circle of Shadows in March last year. It was a months-long battle to close out the first cycle of the Greystone Saga. I was proud of what I accomplished, proud of the story told.

And afraid of what came next.

I had ideas. Some new. Some older than dirt. Hench came up and was quickly put aside. (It’s soooo long!)

But I always knew what I wanted to see next.

I rewrote The Clearing in six days. It needed it, much as my mother keeps telling me how much she enjoyed the book the first time around. My style changed over the three year delay. My narrative instincts evolved (or so I like to think…)

So I set about cleaning up the work, making the season tighter with more connective tissue. And I started to see where things were going.

Before, back in 2015, I had the first season and the inkling of the season opener for the second. That was it. No grand plan. No idea where I was headed. So part of the rewriting process was to find those connections and plant the seeds in season one.

By the end of 2018, all six episodes were rewritten and all six episodes of season two were outlined.

Countdown to launch

My original launch window was June of this year. Well, as you may have noticed, I missed that one. My fault and I’ll tell you why.

I scripted all six books for season 2 in January. It wasn’t my intention. It just happened.

Then Soriya and Loren decided to pull me back to Portents for a few weeks after that for what will be Hammer and Anvil, the first in an unplanned Greystone-In-Training trilogy.

By the time I sat down to start my final edits on season 1 of DSA I was already six weeks behind schedule. Whoops…

It took three months but the hardest part is over. The books are drafted, edited, rewritten, edited again, and probably will be edited one more time come the end of July.

How long does it take to write a book? As long as it does. And as long as it takes to make a kick ass final product.

(I guarantee Hench would have taken longer…)

The DSA arrives this October! Get ready.