First chapters are really important for me…well they should be for every author, but I place a lot of emphasis on them. Some of my favorite openings have been:

* Theft of Swords: The Crown Conspiracy – the thought of Riyria being robbed and Royce giving the thieves advice for the future just seemed like a great, fun way to start out a book.

* Theft of Swords: Avempartha – I really liked Royce and Hadrian putting the squeeze on “DeWitt” for him setting them up.  I also liked the way that whole conflict resolved itself.

I’m actually thinking that the first chapter of Dherg may be my favorite so far.  I think I’m channeling a bit of “The Jester” by starting this chapter out with a great roller coaster ride…very reminiscent of the opening of Indiana Jones (one of my favorite movies).  So I’m pretty darn happy right now, and am going to get back at it. But just wanted to drop in update people about how book #2 is going. 

When last I posted I had just finished the first book of the series.  This was a first draft and I wasn’t even at a stage where I would allow Robin to look at it.  I think the book was suffering on trying to do too much so I spent quite a deal of time determining what I could do to simplify and focus it.  

I ended up removing one of the POV characters and this really did the trick. It also required quite a bit of re-writing and restructuring.  This is what I’ve been working on for the last month or so, and now I’m really happy with the state of book #1.

With that completed, I’ve turned it over to Robin. She’s only read the first section and already has a lot of great feedback (which I quickly incorporated). She has some other things she has to do before she can start digging into it but with that out of the way (for now) I’ve turned my attention to book #2.

Work on it officially started yesterday. I’m not sure I’m going to do a daily word count as I did with the first book but I will have some periodic check-ins with where it is and where it is going.  My hope is to have it done by the end of the year.