I promised to keep up posting stories while the second part of the A Ship Called Hope trilogy gets ready to be serialized. Originally, the trilogy was just a single book and what I had planned wouldn't have amounted to more than 250 pages. Since it takes place fifteen years before the first Sajani Tails, I wanted to have something that tied it into the current time and showed a side of Sajani's character that was only hinted at in the prior books. This involved solving a murder mystery. I wrote the first part of this installment as a "proof of concept" for the publisher, who very wisely suggested it be put on hold until I was further along on Ship.

So when the crew departs the ship on this, that's all that was written before yesterday. I had the plot outlined (I'll post more on that in the next installment, if not, remind me.) and so it didn't take much to write this. For those that might be interested, I write about 1.5k words an hour if[/b] I have a set plan. It doesn't have to be exact. In this case, I knew that the characters met up and, Sajani began telling her story. Everything else was done on the fly.

That said, don't be too critical of this piece. I wrote it quickly and did a single quick pass to find any obvious errors. (I probably still missed a lot.) To say this is a rough draft would be a huge understatement. It's more of just a rough. Draft implies too much. Another few passes would be necessary just to adjust the pacing and add character development. This one also barely uses point-of-view, which is important to me. The whole thing really should be told from Tess's. After this, I'll be posting some deleted scenes from the first book in the trilogy. That was a new thing for me. My publisher doesn't actually delete scenes, he sends them back. When these were sent back, I decided to either just get rid of them or completely rewrite them. It will be fun, so stay tuned.

Anyway, if you like what you see, feel free to share this link on where to find my stories.