Inverarity is not a Scottish village

Well, we live in interesting times, don't we?

This week I started doing judo. I used to practice jujutsu regularly (I have a black belt) but it's been years. COVID happened, and then I got lazy. So back on the mat. It's kind of refreshing to wear a white belt again and not be expected to know anything (even though I do know a few things). But I ain't getting any younger. I felt like I was going to fall over dead after a few randoris, and my entire body is sore.

I've been struggling to write lately. Some of it is stress (mostly worrying about other people more than myself), and some is that I seem to be falling into a harmful doomscrolling habit where every time I mean to sit down and concentrate on something productive, I end up spending hours on X and reddit and YouTube. I need a cure for my Internet addiction. (Yeah, I've tried website blockers and the like; they are too much of a pain to install on multiple devices, and too easy to turn off.)

I have, however, been doing some writing. In fact, I am currently working on three writing projects, including AQ. (No, writing three books at once is not very efficient. Neither is studying two languages at once. (私は子供向けの漫画をほとんど読むことができません, ويمكنني أن أغضب العرب بالحديث عن إسرائيل).

Lately, as those of you who have read my Kindle Unlimited DNF Gauntlet posts have seen, I've been kind of fascinated with indie writers, particularly in the litrpg and progression fantasy genres. I am amazed at authors who can pump out a book every couple of months. The formula for success seems to be building up a back catalog of multiple 12-volume series. This is a writing pace that puts Stephen King and Brandon Sanderson to shame. The impact on quality shows: I've tried some of the highly prolific and very popular authors, and they just... aren't very good. I mean, compared to the stuff I've sampled from RoyalRoad and ScribbleHub, even the most mid indie writers are great, but there's very little craft to their writing, and often only the most boilerplate of stories. But the stuff is crack to their fans, who also amaze me with their reading speed. Reddit is full of people posting "tier lists" like this:



Readers go through multiple books a week, a pace I have not been able to maintain since I was a teenager.

The Things That Pass Through My Social Media Feed

I think romance, particularly high-volume publishers like Harlequin, have similar patterns, and I understand the big thing among indie romance publishers is smut. Smut of all kinds, catering to all sorts of niche fetishes. There are of course the usual dukes and billionaires, but there is also "Dark Fantasy Mob Romance," Wolfpacks, "Omegaverse" (my brain broke a little when I discovered they have diagrams of the differing reproductive organs of "alphas," "betas," and "omegas"), and, uh, sex with doors?

The interesting thing is that this dialog is not dissimilar to the discussion that's been going on about fan fiction for years now. Everyone knows that 99% of what's published on fanfiction.net and AO3 is crap. And that's okay! Because it's mostly people writing for fun, often younger people just learning how to write.

The path from fan fiction writer to pro writer is no longer remarkable, but the shift I have seen over the last few years is that "indie publisher" (i.e. self-published writer) has lost most of its stigma, and more and more writers are just bailing on traditional publishing altogether and setting sail on the Amazonian high seas. Well, it's really more of a river, both metaphorical and literal, since so much of these writers' incomes depends on a single (highly predatory!) platform that can change the terms of payment and the visibility algorithms at any time.

Is this is all vaguely gesturing in the direction of me finally deciding to try indie publishing? Well, maybe. I'm not there yet. First I need to break my doomscrolling habit and write more.

I'm also working on producing the next print volume, this time for Alexandra Quick and the World Away. This is a rough sketch of the cover WIP.

AQATEOT Update

I have written 4 chapters and 19515 words for Alexandra Quick and the End of Time. Right now the outline is a lean 20 chapters, but we all know they are going to multiply. Really trying to keep this book lean enough that it can actually be printed in one volume, though. (Unlike books five and six, which are going to be hard to print in one volume in trade paperback format.)

I started writing when I was in elementary school. I was praised by my teachers and my parents for my imagination and my precocious language skills. I think my mother expected me to become a writer. In my mind, I always thought "Someday I'm going to write a book. (No, I'm going to write a lot of books.)"

Years pass faster than you think.

Lots of people have plans for their lives, but life rarely goes according to plan. I don't really have any reason to regret my choices — I have a solid upper-middle class income, a pretty good work/life balance, a reasonable retirement plan, I'm in good health, and overall, pretty satisfied with my life. There are of course so many things I could have done differently, but who doesn't entertain the occasional fantasy of a do-over?

Still, not many people would be excited, at the beginning of their lives, to be told "Someday you'll work your way up to the Professional managerial class and live the American dream of a mortgage and a pension and maxed-out IRA contributions."

You could do worse. Many people around the world are doing much worse. I am aware, so I do not complain, and any regrets in my life are largely personal ones.

But I do regret never becoming a writer.

I've written before about how I made many halfhearted and unfinished attempts to write a book over the years. Yet Alexandra Quick and the Thorn Circle, a fan fiction novel written over the course of one summer after I devoured the entire Harry Potter series in a few months, was the first time I actually finished something. I'd never been involved in fan fiction before. (Truthfully, I had some friends in high school who wrote fanfic and I always thought it was kind of stupid. Why would you write something based on someone else's characters which you can't even publish, when you could be writing your own stuff?) I do not know what it was about Harry Potter that grabbed me, a middle-aged man well above the age of the typical HP reader (and, uh, truthfully, I'd also been hearing about Harry Potter for years and avoided because it sounded like some dumbed-down fantasy for children). But reading the books lit up something probably not unlike what was lit in Rowling's millions of younger readers. Initially, I wanted to run a Harry Potter RPG. (Once upon a time I was a pretty good GM - whatever storytelling and worldbuilding aptitude I had I mostly exercised in long-running RPG campaigns which were generally well-regarded, and even got me some freelance work with a company you've probably heard of and a game you probably haven't.) The game never happened, but the spark of an idea - an American girl like Harry Potter but, you know, American, and a girl - stuck in my head until I started writing. And somehow, that was the story I kept writing until I finished it.



By the time I finished AQATTC, I already had a series in mind. I made plans to write seven books, just like Harry Potter. I cannot say I was really confident in my ability to do that. (I mean, I was pushing 40 by the time I finished my first book!) But as much as I have struggled with each successive book and shared with you my dilemmas about plot holes and character development and improving my writing, Alexandra stuck with me. I had her entire story, broadly, planned out in my head many years ago. Some things have turned out differently than I planned them, and many details have been altered along the way, but in very broad strokes, everything that's happened in each book was something I cooked up while I was finishing book one. I remember JK Rowling once said that she had her Epilogue written before she finished the first Harry Potter book. I wasn't deliberately trying to copy everything she did, but I have two Epilogues already mostly written.

Hogwarts Houses Divided

Before I started on the second Alexandra Quick book, I began another project. I can't even remember what inspired me to write a NextGen fic. But Hogwarts Houses Divided was the second full-length "novel" I ever finished. To this day, it's more popular than Alexandra Quick, even though I wrote it 15(!) years ago and have never written any sequels.

I think HHD is fun but very definitely a more "classic" work of fan fiction, with all that that entails. It's bloated and meandering and has some questionable plot resolutions, in large part because unlike the Alexandra Quick books, I didn't finish HHD before I began uploading it, so it was a WIP even as it was being posted. I did keep about 10 chapters at a time in reserve so I wasn't flying entirely by the seat of my pants, but like AQATTC, I wrote it without any beta-readers, and unlike AQATTC, I wasn't entirely sure how it would end when I began.

I'm happy to announce that there is finally an updated Hogwarts Houses Divided ebook available for download, in my stories folder.



If anyone has any problems downloading or displaying this ebook or if you find any bugs or typos, please let me know.

I have also, at last, begun posting it to Archive of Our Own. I never bothered before because I needed to clean up the HTML, and also because I kind of figured that anyone who's read AQ already knows about HHD. But apparently that's not the case, so after 15 years, HHD seems to be finding some new readers.

I do plan to eventually create a print-ready PDF for HHD as well, but that's going to require some more work.

From time to time, I still have thoughts about the long-promised HHD sequel (or even the half-thought out trilogy), but...

Unpublished

I haven't written nothing but fan fiction these past few years. In between AQ books 4 and 5, I wrote a science fiction novel. This was my first completed work of original fiction.

A few people read it. They said it was good. Maybe even as good as a lot of published SF novels.

I submitted it to agents and publishers, using all Approved Best Practices, and got... nada. Well, not quite nada. One publisher (who you've probably heard of) told me it had been pulled out of the slush pile and was being reviewed. If you know anything about slush piles, you know that's actually kind of an accomplishment. Most editors will tell you that less than 5% of unsolicited manuscripts make it out of the slush pile.

So I waited. And waited. And waited. (This publisher is kind of notorious for being slow...) After over a year, they told me it had made it to a final round of editorial reviews. Meaning it was one of less than a dozen "good enough" novels they were considering for publication.

It took over another year before I was finally informed that it had not made the final cut. I even received some personal feedback/critique from the editors (which anyone in publishing will tell you is very rare), so, on the one hand, it was kind of encouraging, but... "Almost but not quite" still means "No."

Some years later, I tried again with another round of submissions to agents. Still no interest. Sometimes I reread my story, and I can see flaws and also understand that it isn't really what sells nowadays. Is there still a market for Heinleinesque YA space operas? Maybe, but it's certainly not what any agents I found were looking for.

Have I ever thought about just tossing it up on Amazon just to see if it will "find an audience"? Yeah, I've thought about it. But I know realistically it would probably sell about four copies and disappear.

A professional artist named Pierre Raveneau, who is an AQ fan, even sketched some characters and a cover for me once (just as a favor, not intended for commercial use).



I may try again someday. (I even have a sequel in mind for this one.) Or I may write some more books.

I have another novel I have been working on. An entirely different genre! It's a non-SF, non-fantasy thriller. Once again, inspired randomly but the inspiration stuck with me. It's been a WIP for, well, years. It was originally intended as a "side project" when I needed a break from AQ. It's fallen into the same development hell that so many AQ drafts did. I want to finish it.

Was there a point to all this rambling? Well yes.

Writing is about doing. You're a writer if you write. Not by talking about writing, or buying software and posting on writing forums and plotting and planning your first draft. It's about butt-in-the-chair doing the work, and choosing to do that rather than everything else in your life that you need and/or want to do.

This has always been a problem for me. My mental image of myself is of, some kind of, unpublished-but-future writer. But revealed preferences would suggest I am at best a half-assed hobbyist writer.

And, maybe that's okay. Like I said, my life is good by most standards. Writing is a fine hobby. I have an audience (that's you!) and it's enough to make writing AQ worth it.

But I want to write more. I don't really do "New Year's Resolutions" but I am working on how I can make the necessary adjustments in my habits so that I actually....write. And finish more books.

There are writers who write a book every year. There are machines like Brandon Sanderson who can trip and stand up holding a finished novel. Sure, if you're actually doing it for a living, you will spend more time on it, but I have finished entire books in less than a year! And yet, for the last 10+ years, I have been taking years to finish anything.

I want to finish something. I want to be published. And I want to finish Alexandra Quick.

Alexandra Quick and the Wizard War, Will it come in 2024?

I finished the first draft of Alexandra Quick and the Wizard War in February of last year. I expected to have the final draft done and begin posting by the end of the year.

Obviously, that didn't happen.

I got mentally stuck on a few things. I have mostly worked through them. I think I've made peace with its flaws. AQATWW is (IMO) a good book, maybe not a perfect book, but it is not really going to get better because I keep poking at it and trying to decide which chapters need to be cut or moved or rewritten. I like it in its current state. I know that there are parts an editor would make me cut or change if it were being published. To some degree, this has been true of all AQ books, and I have avoided indulging myself in "I can get away with it because it's fan fiction." But, I can get away with it. I'm not leaving anything that I think is boring or doesn't make sense, but I am definitely leaving some parts that some people won't like. I'm not doing a major rewrite.

I'm 92% finished with my semi-final editing pass. The only things I'm still stuck on are some relatively minor plot holes that I still need to fix. Sometimes I wonder if readers will even notice the plot holes I spend so much time angsting about. (Then they point out plot holes I never even thought of.)

It's still 66 chapters, and the word count stands at 373,693 words.

If I were someone who makes promises, I'd say AQATWW will definitely be posted in 2024... and probably soon. But every time I say something like that, I regret it. (AQATWW was originally going to be finished in 2021.) So what I will promise is that I am going to finish it. And I'm going to finish book seven too. And I'm going to write some other things.

And maybe someday I'll write that sequel to HHD.

Happy New Year.

The first draft of Alexandra Quick and the Wizard War is complete. 388,858 words, 66 chapters.

I cannot overstate how messy and bloated and inconsistent this draft is. I know I say this about all my first drafts, but look at those numbers: almost 400K words! Printed as a standard Young Adult trade paperback, it would be over 1500 pages!

Obviously, I have worked more consistently than I did during the seven-year gap before I published AQATWA, but it was a struggle to finish this draft. There was a point in 2021 where I really thought I was going to finish it by the end of the year. I thought that again late last year. Then I thought "Well, at least I will finish it by the end of January." Well, now it's almost the end of February. I have learned I should not even hint at deadlines or being done until it's done.

In order to push through some of my writing blocks and plot holes, there were times when I just... ignored them and kept writing. This was useful in getting more words written, but it's a struggle for me. When I hit a plot hole, or something that I know doesn't make sense, it feels like a brainteaser. I want to solve it, and I spend days (sometimes weeks) trying to figure it out. This is no way to finish a book, but despite not being a true "pantser" I have never been able to outline everything in advance either. When I sit down and write, the words flow, and if I let them, I can get a lot written. It's when I get "stuck" trying to figure out how to resolve a problem that the words stop. So I made an effort to just keep writing as if I were some kind of NaNoWriMo pantser. It is hard to describe how much this bothers me; it feels like driving over a roadblock and continuing down the road in a car with shredded tires.



And of course, there are Big Questions that have to be answered in this book, and if not in this one, then in book seven, and I am running out of space to punt them. I don't want to write myself into too many corners I have to write my way out of in the final volume.

So now the work of rewriting begins. I have subplots that went nowhere, dangling threads unresolved, entire chapters that should be cut (I just am not sure which ones yet), and entire arcs with major plot holes. I have scenes repeated in different chapters because I wasn't sure where the scene should happen. I have chapters that end with no transition to the next one because I wasn't sure how to get there; "Go back and figure it out later," I told myself. Well, now I have to figure it out.

I don't even like the current ending.

Eventually, when I think I have wrestled this disaster into a "final" draft, I will call upon my trusty beta-readers who have been with me for many years. I am not even going to ask them to look at this first draft, because nobody should inflict a horse-choking manuscript like this on someone for multiple rereads. Then the next round of revisions will begin.

I will leave you with a few pictures. I am not completely abandoning Poser, but I have been playing with Stable Diffusion a lot, and I am getting better at prompting, and after multiple attempts, I've created an AlexandraQuick model that usually generates a consistent picture of Alexandra. (Usually. It still only gets her eye color right half the time, and occasionally adds extra arms or randomly turns her blonde.)

Still Photobashing with Poser

[Poll #2122966]

Spoiler (Sneak Peek at the Prologue)

It's been eight years since my last end-of-book Author's notes. Rereading that post, it's kind of funny how much has changed and how much hasn't.

Finishing Alexandra Quick and the World Away felt... incredible. I've been asked more than once why I don't write something original (working on it), and why I don't try to publish AQ, maybe after stripping it of its Harry Potter provenance. (I addressed that a long time ago) Yes, I do want to write (and publish) original novels. I'm not getting any younger. At the same time, Alexandra Quick is literally a labor of love, and no one will feel worse than me if I never finish the series.

But let's talk about this book, now that it's out there in its completed form.

The writing process and the cutting room floor

Alexandra Quick and the World Away took me over seven years to write. That's taking into account many months in which not a single word was written, and many more months where I opened up the draft, managed to tweak a few sentences, and then closed it again. My initial burst of productivity in the months following the conclusion of AQATSA was followed by years of almost no writing, until last year, when I finally got in gear again. And it was still a long, hard haul. I went back and forth with my betas, sometimes over and over on a few points. There are significant plot arcs that were dropped, and others that were added.

I kind of hesitate to give a look behind the scenes at all the things I changed, because it might damage my image as a master plotter who always knows exactly where the story is going and how to get there, and who planned every brilliant twist all along. What?

Okay, that's not actually how it works. (Stares at notes.)

In fact, most of the major things that happen in the series have been planned since book one. I have always known who lives, who dies, and how the series will end, right down to the final chapter. (Unlike Rowling, I haven't actually written it yet, but it's mostly plotted out in my head.)

That said, things change. Not every single thing I've planned has happened according to my original plan. Occasionally I have had a new and better (or at least different) idea. More often, in order to make the things I had planned work, I had to change other things. Fitting plot points together when you organize like I do can be kind of like putting together a jigsaw puzzle where half the pieces are missing. I'm one of those writers who has numerous scenes vividly detailed in my head — I know what I want to happen and how I want to write them. I have a whole series of them for Alexandra's entire saga, like individual milestones. But I don't have the road that leads past all those milestones, and sometimes forcing my way to one of them is like, well, trying to move a road.

Some of you speculated about the things that were late changes or additions in book five. I won't enumerate all the different iterations and revisions, but literally everything in the Ozark sequence was rewritten multiple times. When I first wrote Alexandra's Ozark quest, she had to do the whole thing without a wand. There are different versions of the story where she ends up with one, two, or three wands. I had to cut a scene with Mr. Bagby that I liked a lot. :( (Don't worry, he will appear in the next book.) A scene with Alexandra, Professor Haster, and the wizards of the Research Office was cut before it even made it to my betas. It was interesting and would have made Professor Haster more of an actual character, but it ultimately added complications without a clear story payoff. Another scene with the hill dwarves was pushed to the next book.

The Ozark sequence was originally even longer, but I knew (and my betas agreed) that some parts needed to be cut. I was self-indulgent with the Pruett School arc; my betas wanted me to chop most of it, and I know that a professional editor would make me do the same. I never insert anything that I don't think has a purpose, but yeah, I probably could have made the story work with a few less day school kids and chapters. The Junior Wizarding Decathlon was problematic in terms of timing and pacing too. I did originally plan for Alexandra to complete the entire Decathlon, but I never even wrote that version because I quickly realized that it needed a different, more abrupt, resolution.

I always had a plan for Bonnie, but it changed significantly in the final draft of this book.

All feedback is good feedback

I've read all your reviews, and most of the discussion on the /r/AlexandraQuick subreddit. And a shout-out to the Dark Lord Potter forum as well, which has supplied an interesting combination of fans and hate-readers for years. It's been great to see that kind of (mostly positive) feedback, while there are always a few folks around to keep me humble by telling me how much I suck.

I'll admit the one criticism I find frustrating is when people still say "Alexandra is such a brat! She never learns!"

I know probably not many people love Alexandra as much as I do, but some people are really too hard on the girl! I know she's flawed and bratty and I deliberately made her hard to like at times, but I still find it hard to understand why some people actively root against her or think she's been more terrible or amoral than she is. And I really don't understand the claims that she "never learns her lesson" and never changes. I think there's a big difference between 16-year-old Alex and 11-year-old Alex, not just in terms of being older and wiser, but also in that 16-year-old Alexandra actually does think about what she's doing and the consequences, and has a stronger moral center. Not that she's perfect by any means — she is still impulsive and reckless and sometimes a jerk. But she has grown up! She's gotten smarter! She's even gotten more considerate! Not just since book one, but since last book! And in my opinion, that progression has been continual throughout the series — with, admittedly, some occasional backsliding. (Her low point was probably book three, which was all about her trying to come to terms with Max's death and making some really bad decisions before she did.) She has continued to make impulsive, bad decisions, but to me, they seem within the range of normal teenage behavior. Maybe compared to Harry Potter, Alexandra does seem pretty bad. Harry's worst moments were screaming at his friends a few times. (Oh, and that Crucio, but that doesn't count, right?) Other than that, he almost always does the right thing. Alex isn't like that. She usually ends up doing the right thing while trying to correct the bad thing she did previously.

I'm not going to tell readers they're wrong, because the reader always takes what they will from the story, and it's not the reader's fault if what they take away is not what the author intended. But I hope Alexandra has aged and matured and seems a year older in each book.

I also realize not everyone is upset when Alexandra is a hardheaded, stubborn little brat, and are waiting to see her go Full Dark. Well, wait and see.

Your speculations and discussion have been gratifying and entertaining (and occasionally baffling — but mostly I haven't felt an urge to say "No, that's wrong!"). Some predictions were spot on. Some, not so much. Some of your ideas made me wish I'd thought of them! Sometimes you give me too much credit. ("Oh... yeah, I totally meant to do that all along!") And sometimes I totally did mean to do that all along.

But there's one thing that made me facepalm, repeatedly.

Holy crap, you guys, I seriously wish I had never mentioned....

"Peak Asshole"

That was a flippant comment I made in discussion with my betas, and I made the mistake of publicly joking about it before I finished the book. So of course readers were waiting for Alex to approach, or cross, the Moral Event Horizon, but when she did, most of you missed it.

But in fairness to you, so did I the first time around.



I don't really blame you if you didn't have the same gut reaction to Alexandra smiting the hill dwarves that a couple of my betas did, because I didn't either. They were the ones who called her out on this — "Like, did Alex just commit genocide? And then create a refugee crisis?" Yeah, she kinda did.

"Genocide" is a little strong. But what Alexandra did was obviously pretty bad. Collective punishment inflicted for the actions of a few, it almost certainly caused casualties, and Alexandra literally destroyed their homes. I admit it was only after my betas pointed this out to me that I realized, uh, yeah, there probably are dwarf women and children in that mountain too, not just the assholes who jumped her. I wrote that scene to be awesome, over-the-top payback, and yes, to show that Alex can get carried away and be kind of dark when pushed. She certainly unleashed her Inner Asshole in that moment. But a couple of my betas reacted very strongly to this, to the point that they were practically rooting against her after that.

To be fair to myself, I was never going to treat it like no big deal. There will be some future consequences, which I did have planned beforehand. But I realized there was something a bit lacking in the aftermath of Alexandra literally purging a community, and risked making it seem as if it really had been no big deal. I'm generally against obligatory authorial moralizing (i.e., "The main character did something bad, so the author must make it clear that it was bad"), but Alex needed to be confronted with the consequences of her actions sooner than next book.

Now — in Alexandra's defense:

• She had been exhausted and terrorized for days.


• The Unworking had literally driven her half-crazy.


• Notwithstanding everything I said above about Alexandra's character growth, she was 15. How many kids wouldn't react disproportionately in her situation?


• While maybe not every single member of the hill dwarf community was guilty of wrongdoing, this wasn't just one gang of hoodlums... There were other hints that Alexandra was not the first person to get abducted by the little fuckers.

Does all of that excuse what she did? Maybe not, but I think it ameliorates it considerably.

That said, it was definitely way, way worse than cheating on her boyfriend (which she also did while suffering what jackbethimble aptly called a "magic-induced manic episode"). I mean, come on.

So, that's it. That was what my betas and I considered the "peak asshole" moment, while a lot of you spent the rest of the book asking "So, was that the Peak Asshole moment? No? Do you think she's going to do something even worse?"

Even my betas sometimes think Alex is a bigger jerk than I do. So maybe I'm just too much of a doting author.

(My betas also think Alexandra is totally a speciesist. Admittedly, her relationship with non-humans has been antagonistic more often than not.)

I did spend a lot more time (and discussion) on the other big scene following her magic-induced manic episode:

In which "an old(ish) white dude" writes about a teenage girl's sex life

Many readers assume I'm a woman until they find out differently, and I generally take that as a compliment. I'm a middle-aged guy writing a teenage girl MC, so to be able to do it well enough that readers are convinced she's being written by a woman means I'm probably doing okay. But this book was when Alexandra loses her virginity, and I admit I was a bit worried about all the ways that a middle-aged man writing about an underaged girl having sex could go wrong. And of course, to make it even more "problematic," the guy she hooks up with is 19.

Obviously I had no interest in sexualizing Alex or writing erotica, but I wanted it to be realistic without being prurient. And I was threading the needle between "Statutory rape is totally cool!" and not falling back into that obligatory authorial moralizing.

(Incidentally, gods help me I actually looked up age of consent laws. I think Burton would technically be okay in Arkansas, thanks to a close-in-age exception, but guilty of a felony in Missouri or Illinois. I don't know what Ozarker or Confederation age of consent laws say; Burton should probably be more worried about what Alexandra's father would say...)

So I went back and forth a lot with my betas (two of whom are women, btw) about all the interactions with Burton. Was I making it seem like it's no big deal that a 19-year-old is hitting on a 15-year-old? Did I need to be clear in the text that this is Not Okay? As I said, I have a strong aversion to authorial moralizing, but pro authors get dragged for less, so it was a concern. I've generally been pretty good about writing a teenage girl in a believable, non-creepy way (so I have been told), and this was definitely an opportunity to fuck up with /r/menwritingwomen material.



So far I've only received one really negative review. Someone really didn't like my handling of Anna and Alex, and wrote a screed about how "trashy" the writing was.

Dear anonymous reviewer: while your criticism stung, hate-reviews from anons are hard to take seriously. Someone who won't even leave a pseudonym to sign a flaming FU does make me wonder if I'm just being trolled.

So, I honestly have no idea what you meant by "porn dialog," and I'm not sure how being white made my failure extra-faily, but it's time to talk about....

Shipping

Let me answer the big question many of you have had: yes, I had this planned from the beginning. Yes, all the way back in book one. Anna has always had a crush on Alex, and it was never going to end well, because... Alex isn't gay. People have picked up on the "shipping vibe" for years, but read carefully and you'll see that what you were picking up on was Anna's feelings. Has Alex ever reciprocated, in any way but friendship? No. Rather, I think the hints have also been there, nearly from the beginning, that whatever romantic feelings Alexandra had were directed at boys. She loves Anna. But she likes boys.

Now, I've been accused of "teasing" shippers, and of course I was not insensible to the fact that many people saw signs pointing to an Anna/Alex pairing. But y'all saw what you wanted to see, and I just didn't contradict you. Things proceeded in what I considered to be a natural and inevitable way, as I planned from the very beginning. Alex avoided responding to Anna's increasingly strong signals, because she didn't want to confront those feelings and break her friend's heart. Yeah, she loves Anna enough, and she might even be "bi-curious" enough, that she'd be willing to give it a try, but fortunately, after her initial undignified breakdown at the ball, Anna herself realized what a bad idea that would be. (I think Anna can be forgiven for not being her best self in the very moment her heart was broken.)

I set up the hints and I set up the heartbreak, but I wasn't teasing, I was telling a story about falling in love with your best friend, who doesn't feel the same way.

Am I giving you Word of God that Anna/Alex is never, ever going to happen? Well, they're both teenagers and teenagers have a lot of living and finding themselves to do. That's not a hint or a promise or a tease. I'm just saying there are possible worlds in which the two of them could wind up together (I guess you could consider that permission to go ahead and write your own fanfic!). But I just told you which way Alex leans, so...

Why Did You Do That????

Yeah, I also planned Alex and Larry from the beginning.

By which I mean I planned for them to develop feelings for each other — I'm making no promises of foe-yay sex, let alone a HEA.

Larry has always, of course, been Alexandra's "Draco." Observant readers have noticed that though AQ has diverged wildly from the HP plot arc (and now, from Rowling's canon), I have deliberately set up parallels throughout the series. I don't echo every plot point or character archetype in Rowling's books, but I hit a lot of them, while putting my own spin on them.

So, Harry/Draco is really, really popular with HP fandom. Which led me to think: okay, what if I actually went with that? What would an actual non-crappy foe-yay ship look like?

To do that, of course, I had to make Larry a believable antagonist, but also not an irredeemable dick. Ya know, Harry/Draco shipping never really bothered me per se, because fans like their yaoi. But it did annoy me that so many people read a redemption arc into Draco's story that just wasn't there. Rowling only started humanizing the little bastard a little bit towards the very end. He fears for his family, he's torn up about having to kill Dumbledore, and once he's actually in the Dark Lord's service, he realizes he doesn't like what he signed up for. So he's not a complete sociopath, but Draco doesn't have a single moment in seven books, until that head-nod in the Epilogue, when he's not a violent, nasty bigot. Rowling never made him even a little bit sympathetic or likeable. Even his regrets are entirely self-serving. I could believe maybe he was like a kid growing up with white supremacist parents who never really understood what lynching was like, but he still read to me like his parents, who did not seem to regret their life choices, only that they hadn't worked out the way they expected.



Way back in Chamber of Secrets, Draco openly wished for the death of the "Mudblood" Hermione, which makes Draco/Hermione shipping seem a lot like shipping a Hitlerjugender with Anne Frank. But I get it, it's the lure of the "bad boy" who can be redeemed by love.

That wasn't exactly what I was going for with Alexandra and Larry: Alex is no one's redeemer, and I wanted Larry to be a kid who starts with prejudices and an attitude but who actually grows up. I know "opposites attract" rarely turns out well in real life, but I always find those stories interesting. I meant for their rivalry to signal a deeply-buried level of fascination, turning to grudging respect, turning into mutual attraction, so pat yourselves on the backs, Larrex shippers, for spotting that all the way back when. I know a lot of people hate the "foes-to-lovers" trope (including at least one of my betas) but... well, too bad. That's how I roll, and this was my plan all along. I wanted to take a pair of antagonists and turn them into something else.

The rest of their story has yet to be written, of course. Plenty of folks have commented on the, ahem, volatility of Alex's relationships. And Larry, while he certainly possesses nobler qualities, is still an enthusiastic supporter of the Elect and their privileges, which means he has some stuff to deal with after the end of AQATWA.

And for the folks who don't like shipping at all and wondered why Alexandra's hormones kept interfering with her mission — she's a teenager, and while she may be an extraordinary teenager, she is nothing if not passionate. I am not a romance writer and shipping is never going to be the focus of my stories, but I have always tried to make my teenagers realistic, and teenagers think about sex... a lot.

Alexandra Quick - the Character

Psst. This is the section for 100% unthrottled RPG nerdery. Just skip it if you don't care.

jackbethimble made a D&D 5E character sheet for Alexandra. I initially thought Int 18 seemed high, but I acknowledge that it doesn't strictly correspond to IQ, so okay, mechanically it probably fits.

Nowadays I'm more of an OSR guy. (I'm actually playing in a D&D game, for the first time in years, but 5E feels... wrong. There's a very noticeable difference between TTRPGs before and after the age of computer RPGs.)

I've never thought D&D is particularly good at representing cinematic or literary characters outside of a very narrow swords & sorcery setting, though. (Even if Dragon Magazine did once publish a stat block for Bugs Bunny. This back when RPGs were so niche and nerdy that they flew under the radar of WB's lawyers. Not so much nowadays.)

But GURPS? Now that's a system that can do almost anything. (Though admittedly, not everything well.)

I don't play GURPS much anymore, because games where you need a spreadsheet to create a character scare most people. But GURPS Character Sheet makes it a lot easier.

So, here is Alexandra, age 16, as of the end of AQATWA. Any GURPS grognards feel free to discuss the character sheet, but note that this is a fairly quick and simple job (all 9 pages of it...), without a lot of setting-specific customization.

Seven pages are just spell lists...

I didn't spend a lot of time engineering a house-ruled Harry Potter/AQ-specific magic system, but the standard GURPS system actually covers most Harry Potter magic pretty well. I stuck to the default limit of Magery 3; otherwise Alex would be a total munchkin with, like, Magery 8. All you'd really need to do is make a list of spells (like Invisibility, Flight, and Create Food) that are off-limits, and devise the rules for wands. Wands should probably have some "Powerstone" functionality - meaning they store extra fatigue points to cast spells with, which Alexandra's skinny 8 ST ass needs. I might also let wands have individual bonuses and penalties for certain schools, according to their affinities.

And I'd let Alexandra attempt spells she doesn't know or do wandless magic with a reduced penalty, if she makes her Poetry roll and if the player improvises a good rhyme on the spot!

Does she seem a little OP? Well... I rounded her off at 400 points, so if we assume she started as a 100-point character at age 11 (for reference, GURPS PCs usually start at 150 points; 100 is the lower end of the "hero" scale, and I might be able to create an 11-year-old Alex with as little as 50 points), then she's earned about 60 XPs per year, or 5 XPs per month. That's a bit generous, since she wasn't actually "adventuring" every month of her life since age 11, but I guess she gets in a lot of solo sessions with the GM.

Not every spell listed in her GURPS grimoire is something you've actually seen her cast. I mostly followed GURPS rules, but ignored a few prerequisites here and there. But yes, in GURPS terms, our 16-year-old witch has a spell list to put veteran wizards to shame. Of course, she has a whole lot of spells she knows well enough, but very little specialization. (You can bet Abraham has a bunch of spells at level 20+.) She's dabbled in most colleges, but has few of the "major" spells from any of them. Aside from all those Planar spells, which are frankly a plot device.

A small note here about appearance, since I also noticed some people speculating about how pretty Alexandra is. In GURPS, Charisma is an Advantage that is separate from physical appearance. You will notice that I didn't buy any levels of Attractiveness for Alex. She is, in my mind, average looking - neither pretty nor unpretty. Like most young people, dressing up and a little makeup can have a dramatic impact on her appearance (as Julia keeps pointing out), but Burton's description of her, while a little mean, was not inaccurate.

Obviously, even GURPS is only an approximation; while it was fun and interesting to create this character sheet, I'm not using it when I actually write the next book...

Alexandra Quick and the Wizard War

I had to go back and forth with my beta-readers a bit on whether it should be Alexandra Quick and the Wizard War, Alexandra Quick and the Wizards War, or Alexandra Quick and the Wizards' War. I mean, any one of them is technically correct.

Given how long it took me to get AQATWA out, you are understandably wondering how soon you can expect to see AQATWW.

I will make no promises. I will set no deadlines. I've learned my lesson.

That said, I have been writing, and I have hopes that I'll be able to continue writing at a pace nearer to books 1-4 than book 5.

I've said before I tend to be a poor outliner. This time around, I am trying to outline more beforehand. Even with an outline, it's hard, because listing what you want in chapter 22 doesn't mean it will fit there or provide the narrative path to get there. But for the first time, I have actually written down every single plot point, every milestone, every character development, all the scenes that have been in my head since the beginning of the series, and arranged them loosely in the order in which they are supposed to happen.

That doesn't mean the story fits together yet, mind you. It's kind of like if I started outlining Star Wars and had written:



Take all the ways that needs to be fleshed out, all the failed ideas discarded, and everything rewritten to make it make sense and appear in the final form, and that's about how much my initial outline resembles what you see in the final form. But much more elaborate and...entangled.

I am outlining books six and seven right now — my aim is to have the entire arc of the end of the AQ series more or less plotted out before I even finish book six. The problem is that all those loose ends I've left laying about, all those unanswered questions, I have resolutions and answers to them — or at least, I have my original plans. Except that the story has sometimes taken twists and turns I didn't originally foresee, and now I'm like..... huh, how is that going to work? And there's shit like "Blow up the Death Star" which I have always known is going to happen, and still don't know how. I have plotted out the major arcs of Alexandra's story years in advance. Actually doing the work to bring it all together coherently, well, hopefully an honest-to-god outline will help.

Yes, I still plan on a seven-book series. I mentioned a while ago that I might end the series with book six. That's still not impossible, but it would require a pretty substantial revision in my current outline, and I don't think it's going to happen. What I also don't know is whether I'll be able to stick to the "one year per book" formula. That parallels Harry Potter, but it was difficult stretching AQATWA out over a year, because of the loss of the school year structure, and so while the Wizard War could easily take a year or more, right now I am staring at long stretches of time between major scenes, and trying to figure out how to fill it. My plan has always been for Alex to be 18 when the series ends; going seven books, but with Alexandra only 16 or 17 at the end, won't feel quite right.

I don't want to tie myself down to a particular structure and timeline just because "That's what I always intended," but I am loathe to abandon that HP parallel that I've managed to maintain so far.

Right now, I have thirty-five chapters of AQATWW and 14 chapters of book seven roughly (very, very roughly) outlined.

So far, I've actually written 13 chapters and about 75,000 words (though that word count includes outlining, rough notes, character descriptions, and other miscellaneous non-story text).

It's in progress, and it's moving, though I'm back to a lull as I try to push past the plotting problems I'm having. I will continue to post here to update you. I've seen many, many comments along the lines of "Please don't take another 4-7 years!" All I can say is, Ima gonna try.

/r/AlexandraQuick AMA

Although I have read the AQ subreddit regularly, I have rarely posted there. (I use the reddit username inverarity-writer.) I didn't want to change the nature of the discussion by having the author "present."

I still don't plan to actively participate there, but I did promise an AMA. I am going to tentatively declare this to be Saturday, March 7. On that day, I shall log in at approximately 9 am EST, and give you all a chance to ask me... uh, anything.

Please note that "AMA" doesn't mean I'm going to answer everything. Obviously, I will not be handing out spoilers for books six and seven. (Maybe teeny-tiny ones. We'll see.) And I'm pretty guarded about my personal life. But in general, ask away and I'll do my best.

Alexandra Quick print and ebooks

My project to produce a professional-looking trade paperback version of Alexandra Quick and the Thorn Circle (and eventually, of all the books in the series) proceeds apace - thanks to none other than Sam Gabriel, who is producing wonderful chapter illustrations for a ridiculously low price.



Don't miss Sam's Alexandra Quick Audiobook Project (he's up book three now).

I've commissioned a full color cover for the book, so I'm hoping for a test print run later this year. I'll show off pictures when I have them. Several people have asked for access to the PDF files so they can print their own copies. I am still thinking this over. My inclination is to say yes: I don't think there are any legal considerations, other than the gray legality of all fan fiction, since I would not be charging anything to anyone, not even shipping costs. On the other hand, a bunch of people paying to print off their own copies of a fan fiction novel does start to edge into territory that might draw the Eye of Sauron. And selfishly, I kind of like the idea of keeping these exclusive print editions... well, exclusive. On the other hand, selfishly, I like the idea of Alexandra Quick paperbacks appearing all over the world, too. And really, people could print the existing PDF copies of my books if they really wanted to, though those are definitely not formatted for POD printing.

In the meantime, I will definitely be creating an AQATWA ebook to go with all the other AQ ebooks. I just need a cover for the epub version.

Thanks for reading! Please give me a heads up if you do any AQ fan art - I love to see it, and sometimes I discover stuff posted on Tumblr or DeviantArt that's been there for years, yet the artist never told me about it.

Lastly, if I could ask as a favor, any fans who are so inclined to consider updating the Quickipedia and/or the Alexandra Quick TVTropes pages. Also, rather to my surprise, I have a Goodreads author page! I thought they used to prohibit fan fiction, but apparently, you can go and rate my books there. (I am not, however, the Inverarity who authored Labour Employment Compliance in Ireland.)

That's all! Comments welcome.

AQATWA is heading toward the final arc. Reddit is discussing where Alexandra would be Sorted at Hogwarts (I already answered this a long time ago) and what she would be like if she were a boy.

Sending OCs to Hogwarts, and gender-swapping characters, is a favorite theme in fanfiction, and you are welcome to write one yourself. (Now and then people ask me "permission" to borrow Alexandra or my setting for their own stories, and my answer is always that fanfiction writers are already borrowing someone else's world, so how could I possibly justify denying someone else permission to do the same thing?) I am (Spoiler) never sending Alexandra to Hogwarts, though.

(However, right now I do have a couple of canon characters appearing in Book Six.)

Here's my take on Alex as a boy: the series would be even less popular, because I think Alex as a boy would be less sympathetic to readers who love Alexandra and simultaneously want to slap her and give her a hug. Conversely, I think Alex would be considered less "unlikeable" than Alexandra, because all the swaggering, arrogant, hotheaded nonsense that Alexandra gets into, her stubbornness, her refusal to learn her lesson, her belligerent defiance of authority and boundaries, would be considered more "normal" (if not more acceptable) for a boy. But really, the story would just be completely different. I can't exactly tell you why I originally decided to make my protagonist a girl (doing a "genderswapped Harry" story never even occurred to me) but writing Alexandra has been a tremendous amount of fun but also requires me to do a lot of thinking. She is more "real" to me than probably any other character I've ever created. I, obviously, have no experience being a girl, and there are so many ways a middle-aged guy writing a young female character can go horribly wrong. But I do not subscribe to the notion that "men write women badly" (or vice versa) in general - there are good writers and bad writers, and good writers can write believable characters who are totally unlike themselves. I'm certainly not the first man to write a girl protagonist, and plenty of others have done it quite well. Honestly, I don't actually think it's any harder for a man to write a woman than it is for, say, a liberal to write a conservative. Can you represent someone with polar opposite political or religious views as a rational, sympathetic person with internal motivations that make sense? If you can't do that, you probably can't write someone of the opposite sex well either, and vice versa.


That wasn't Jack Nicholson, that was his character. Come on, Meme Guy.

That said, there was a lot of discussion between me and my beta-readers about Alex and Burton hooking up. "Oh gods, I'm writing about a fifteen-year-old girl losing her virginity to an older man, this is how pro authors get dragged on /r/menwritingwomen!" o..O

Anyway, the reddit discussions are great. And yes, people have occasionally spotted gaps or even outright errors, some of which are fixable and some of which are not, and some of which I don't agree with but can see why some readers feel a particular way. I still plan to do an AMA when AQATWA is all posted, which will be your opportunity to come at me about why I did this or didn't do that, what I think about a particular theory, etc. On the one hand, sometimes I feel like I should have had another dozen betas on the book. On the other, having a dozen betas sounds like a nightmare, so I'm not going to do that.

First two books are completed on audio!

If you've missed it, Sam Gabrielvo has been working on the Alexandra Quick Audiobook Project. He's been releasing it as a regular podcast, and book one is complete! Book two is now being released, and he's given me a preview of the completed work. Definitely will make it easier when I need to do a complete reread of the series (again).

Other Writing Projects: That NaNoWriMo novel and AQ6

Well, I did not "win" NaNoWriMo. I did get about 20,000 words done. I could have done better if I'd been more dedicated. I still like the idea of my NaNoWriMo novel, but unsurprisingly, it's a hot mess in its current form. Right now I am kind of switching between it and Alexandra Quick Book Six, wanting on the one hand to get another original fiction finished (I ain't getting any younger, if I want to be a Published Author I need to have something publishable someday), but I don't want to put off finishing AQ either.

Book Six is at eleven chapters and about 62,000 words.

Anyone Layout Gurus Out There?

Another side project I am working on is printing some hardcopies of my Alexandra Quick novels. Not for sale - I am just going to use one of the many vanity press/self pub sites to run off a few copies so I can have some "real" books sitting on my shelf, and give them away to a select handful of people. But goddamit is Libre Writer a PITA when it comes to fiddly little things like alternating headers, properly formatted TOCs, etc. I might end up springing for Microsoft Office if Word would actually make it easier, even though I've been happy with Libre Office and Scrivener for years. But I am not sure if Word is any easier when it comes to formatting books for printing. And I am not buying a professional layout program that would have an even steeper learning curve.


What is this bullshit? Why was the last chapter inserted as the first chapter name? Where are my chapter numbers? Grrrrrr....

Once I conquer the layout problem, I intend to commission a professional-style cover, and maybe even some individual chapter illustrations, like the ones Mary GrandPré did for Harry Potter. My goal is try to make my AQ hardcopies look as much like the HP books as possible (including duplicating the fonts). I'm going to do a "first edition" of AQATTC, and if that works, my grand ambition is a set of seven hardcover books when the series is finished - that will be my reward to myself.

Please continue to read and comment on and review Alexandra Quick and the World Away, and show the Quickipedia a little love, too.


More fan art, dammit I lost the artist's name, I found it somewhere on Tumblr..

I think Ozarkers broke my spellchecker.

The last stage before the manuscript is "final" is doing a final spellcheck.

"Wait, don't you spellcheck it as you're going?" you ask. "Don't your betas check your spelling?"

Yes, and everyone knows you can't rely on a spellchecker to catch all your mistakes. But it does catch (most) typos, and running the entire draft through a spellchecker in one pass catches many inconsistencies that aren't apparent when you are reading a chapter at a time. Especially when you're dealing with things like Potterwords, that sometimes are capitalized and sometimes aren't. Names spelled inconsistently (like "Maximilian" spelled with two "l"s). The dreaded extra space. (Okay, no one dreads that. It's just annoying.)

The problem, however, is when you have large chunks of the book filled with dialog that no spellchecker recognizes as English. Man, I had to click "Ignore" a lot.

Why am I sharing the fascinating details of final draft preparation with you? Because the final draft is done.

Alexandra Quick and the World Away is done.

59 chapters, 288,900 words.

(This word count will change a little bit, because even though I say the draft is final, I still do one final read-through of each chapter before I post it, and frequently tweak a few things here and there.)

I will begin posting in August. My plan right now is to post twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. I'll be posting concurrently to fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own.

It's been a long, long road.

Sigh. Yes, yes I do.

Besides speculating about my age, the folks on the AQ subreddit have produced some more fanworks.

First, more awesome illustrations by Amnevitah:


Abraham Thorn redo by Amnevitah on DeviantArt


Alex and Charlie by Amnevitah on DeviantArt

Second, veyatie has recorded Chapter One of Alexandra Quick and the Thorn Circle:

Alexandra Quick Fan Reading -- Alexandra Quick and the Thorn Circle, Chapter One

As someone who listens to a lot of audiobooks, this was quite a treat.

I can only hope after all this anticipation and excitement, AQATWA lives up to expectations.

Yeah, yeah, but how close to done are you?!

Well, I thought I had a mostly final draft, just needed some polish, some judicious cuts, proper editing, maybe a few tweaks here and there...

In fact, the rewriting of this draft has been more extensive than any of my previous books. It has been a grueling process for myself, and my betas, as I've gone back and forth on several plot points, and written multiple alternate versions for certain portions of the story. None of my previous AQ books had so many chapters written and rewritten. It's been a lot of work, and many, many darlings have been murdered. And ironically, after all my efforts to trim unnecessary and bloated chapters, the result has been a larger draft, thanks to several inserted and expanded scenes. More scenes may yet be cut, added, and rewritten, but for those who track these things, the current manuscript size is 287K words — yes, that's up by about 7000 words (two whole chapters!) since last progress report.

I am still hoping to finish the final draft and start posting by the end of the summer. That is, again, not a promise, but I still consider it quite doable and I think I'll get there. Fingers crossed.

One beta has completed the first read-through of the manuscript. A second is almost done, number three is about halfway through.

The good news: So far, no one is saying it sucks. Positive feedback for the most part.

The bad news: It had to happen, but we've gotten to the hard parts now. Comments are no longer just about individual paragraphs that are written sub-optimally, or scenes that need refinement. Nope, we've hit plot holes, entire chapters that have been recommended for the cull, other chapters which I'm told are supposed to be extremely emotional and yet lack emotional affect, and then there are the "WTF ALEX?" moments.

The lack of emotional resonance is largely due to the way I write Alexandra. She's not usually particularly demonstrative, as you know. But I live in her head, so when I write that she says or does something, without an outward indicator of how she's feeling, well, it's obvious to me what the significance is. I need beta readers to point out to me when it's not obvious to the reader, even someone familiar with Alex and her habit of trying to be Little Miss Stoic.

That's probably fixable. But there are chapters that go on for quite a stretch of time on one particular subplot, and clearly some of them go on too long, which is why I'm about to face the painful dilemma of figuring out which of my darlings to kill. You all will (if I do it right) never know which brilliant line of dialog was cut, or which hilarious or poignant or clever scene was ultimately deemed unnecessary to move the story forward. But I will! Cutting is hard.

Then there are the plot holes. So far, not huge gaping ones that make the entire story collapse, thankfully, but a few have definitely emerged, and in the process of figuring out how to write my way around them, new ideas have emerged, and since I am also in the process of outlining books six and seven... there is going to be some significant rewriting.

Also, the phrases "Moral Event Horizon" and "Peak Asshole" have been used. (Okay, I coined the last one.)

I don't think it's a literal Moral Event Horizon. Alex has her redeeming moments, too. I still love her. But she's gonna have a lot to atone for.

Thanks to all the aforementioned plot holes and impending rewrites, I will treat you to the rough sketches of some scenes that may or may not actually appear in the final draft...

( Alex, going places and making friends. )

I am about to go on vacation (out of the country!). So probably no posting for a while, but I'll have my laptop with me and I might try to write a bit when I have a spare moment.

AQATWA Status

swissmarg is about halfway through. shinygobonkers is at about the 25% mark, and tealterror0 is wrapping up other projects and will hopefully be able to start shortly.

So far, revision still consists mostly of word polishing and clarifications here and there. I have changed some scenes, deleted a couple, and added a couple more, but it's too early to say whether any really big changes will be needed.

Right now AQATWA is still 60 chapters and 283,300 words. Woof!

Plans Years In the Making

J.K. Rowling is often praised for her foreshadowing. Planting of seeds, laying of Easter eggs. The planning she demonstrated, from the very beginning, is one of the hallmarks of Harry Potter, and one of the things that elevates it above so many other children's book series. It's not that no other author ever did that, but there really aren't very many other children/YA series (or at least, there were not at the time) where it was clear that the author had the endgame planned out from the beginning and laid clues throughout the earlier books to things that would happen later.

Of course, this is also one of the most frequent criticisms leveled against her, by fans disappointed in her execution. I have a less harsh view of The Deathly Hallows than some, but you can certainly see places where Rowling kinda sorta knew how she wanted things to go way back when, but wasn't sure how to tie it together when she got there. We know, from her statements, that she had the Epilogue planned from the very beginning. She knew Voldemort would be defeated, the next generation would grow up in a better world, and that Harry would wind up with Ginny and Ron with Hermione (to the angst-ridden screams of millions of shippers who had different ideas).

What I often wonder is how much of the rest she had planned and how much she made up as she went along. It's pretty clear she had Horcruxes planned from the beginning, but I'll bet the Deathly Hallows were something she invented later, maybe as late as while she was writing book seven. I believe Snape's character arc, and the death of Dumbledore, were things she had planned from the start. But when did she invent the Luna Lovegood character? I wouldn't be surprised if Luna popped out of her head fully formed, because she needed a character to fill that role, while she was writing book five. (Maybe she's said differently somewhere? I dunno.)

Did Rowling have the Triwizard Tournament neatly outlined in advance? How about the Battle of Hogwarts? I'm betting the latter was a big climactic but vague scene in her head until late in the series. It always seemed rather messily plotted for such an epic climax.

Did she know every character who was going to live and die when she started writing? Did she ever change her mind? I would give much to sit down with Rowling and ask her those questions, though at this point, I fear fame and ego have gone to her head and I'm not sure she'd be able to answer honestly if she wanted to. She's doing too much retconning as it is.

But, this is all of obvious relevance to me, because, y'know. Years ago, when I began the Alexandra Quick series, I made the insanely ambitious (and optimistic) decision that this was going to be a seven-book series, like the original.

I have also been praised for my foreshadowing (why yes, I did have a lot of this planned out from the very beginning!), so I also worry about whether I can pull off the final execution.

When I finished Alexandra Quick and the Thorn Circle, I did not have the next six books plotted out. And in fact, I still don't.

As a writer, I am a bit of a hybrid between pantser and plotter.

This is evident when I sometimes find the notes I wrote while working on previous books. I am kind of a sloppy outliner. Until now I have usually scribbled ideas down in a notebook, and the finished work is often quite different from what I originally outlined. I have discovered subplots and characters that I forgot all about, to be replaced with something else. I have always had a pretty good idea of what will happen in general in any given book, but the specific resolution for each plot point is often quite different from what I originally brainstormed when first writing down my ideas. I apparently had a very different storyline originally planned for Darla and Alexandra, though the end result was going to be the same. Sonja Rackham being elevated from extra to supporting cast was a decision I made spontaneously in book four. I have a file full of excerpts I cut from AQATSA.

So I'm trying to do things a little differently for the last two books. I have started an outline in Scrivener (which is what I use to write) instead of just scribbling notes in a journal.

Right now books six and seven are a mess of scenes and plot points and events that have been in my head for years. I have known from the beginning how the series will end. Now it's time to write all those scenes down, and organize. So I can finish this thing. Maybe without taking seven years on the next book.

Here is another art sneak preview:

( For all the King's horses And all the King's men Do not have the power To change this oblivious fate  )