January Writing Wrap-Up

As planned, I completed and published The Shape of Terror, the second book in my Jonah Lane paranormal mystery series, under my alternate pen name A.J. Burnes. I wrote close to 30,000 words over the course of the month to finish up the first draft, then edited that down by about 1,000 words to reach the final draft of the book.

For February, I’m moving on to the first book in a brand-new series. The book is called Under the Sun, and it’s the first installment in Uncanny Crime Log, which is an urban fantasy crime thriller series. The series follows a federal agent who works for an organization that resolves supernatural, or “uncanny,” crime.

I’m hoping to finish Under the Sun by the end of February and then immediately move on to book two in the series so that I can get the series well-established before I return to City of Crows and Jonah Lane for the next installments of both of those series in late spring/early summer.

Looking forward to having a productive spring and publishing some new and exciting projects!

— Clara Coulson

December Writing Wrap-Up

December turned out to be an “okay” month for writing. Like usual, my writing sessions were interrupted by the holidays here and there, but I still made a fair amount of progress.

I wrote about 28,000 words of The Shape of Terror, the second Jonah Lane novel. I’m on track to finish the draft in a week or two, which means it’ll come out in the second half of January.

That’s about where I wanted to be at the beginning of 2023, so I consider December to be an overall success. I could’ve written a bit more, if I’d put my mind to it, but I don’t like to stress myself out (because that actually makes me less productive).

Once I finish the draft of The Shape of Terror, I’ll be moving on to the first book in a new series. Which is exciting, but also a terrifying prospect, since you never know how your readers are going to respond to a new series.

I’m hoping for a good response to the new series, as well as a continued positive response to the new Jonah Lane book. Either way, 2023 is going to be a year filled with new stuff, including more sequels to my currently running series and brand-new urban fantasy adventures.

I’m looking forward to sharing more of my books with you all in the coming months. Keep an eye out on my social media for the official release date announcement for The Shape of Terror. It’ll be posted as soon as I finish the draft.

—Clara Coulson

November Writing Wrap-Up

November was a great month for me, in terms of general publishing excitement. I released Night Seeker, the new City of Crows novel, and it performed pretty well. That gave me a confidence boost. 🙂

I did scrap another draft, unfortunately, but it was only 7,000 words this time. I realized that I started in the wrong place in the timeline for The Shape of Terror, the next Jonah Lane book. And since I hadn’t worked on the draft for a few weeks at the time anyway, I just went ahead and trashed it.

I started over in a different spot in the timeline, and the new draft has been progressing much better. I passed the 20,000 word mark a few days ago. Hopefully, I can finish the draft in December, in time for an early January release.

Learned my lesson last time though. No firm release date till I finish a draft, lol.

Anyway, The Shape of Terror is coming along. It’ll be my first release of 2023, and should be followed shortly by several more books. I might also try to get ahead in December by starting the draft of a second book, but that of course depends on how busy I am over the holidays.

As it stands, I’m in a pretty good place writing wise at the moment. If all goes well, 2023 will start with a bang.

– Clara Coulson

October Writing Wrap-Up

After a tumultuous spring and summer, I have at last completed the next City of Crows novel, Night Seeker. Coming in at 71,000 words, the book is officially the shortest in the series (thus far), but word count isn’t proportional to the amount of action and adventure (and snark from Calvin Kinsey).

In fact, Night Seeker has quite a lot in the way of adventure, more so than most of the other books in the series. And during that adventure, there’s a bunch of new character introductions, new world-building information, and setups for a lot of the major plot threads of the latter half of the series.

Night Seeker is essentially a transitional book between the “buildup” half of the series and the “climactic” half of the series. Starting with book ten, things really start rolling, and they don’t stop until the end of the series.

I’m very happy that I finally got this book written. I scrapped 50,000 words of the first draft and started over…because the first draft sucked. Like really, really bad. So that was a major setback, but the restart was a great decision. The plot of the second draft is much more exciting and advances the series plot a great deal more than my original draft.

Right now, Night Seeker is in proofreading, with an official publication date of 11/15/22. So keep your eyes peeled for the official release announcement. It should be coming very soon!

—Clara Coulson