Life can be complicated and when it is, it is hard to focus on what is important. I sometimes get anxious when there is a lot of work to do and I am not sure what to focus on. It drives my husband a little nuts because I move from one topic to the next, even in conversation. That is why I like to write lists and have the most important thing visible in front of me.
In my quest to focus, in the morning I go for a walk and all those thoughts and ideas flow and at the end of the walk, I found the thing that most resonates with me and that is what I am going to focus on.
I openly tell people that my books have the complexity of Game of Thrones because, well, there are a lot of characters and a lot of worlds. That is just like me. I get bored focussing on the same things over and over again and I like the stimulation I get from learning new things.
But progress comes from consistency. So for the sake of sanity, the consistent parts of my books are Nadine, her dragon, and her tutors. And of course, my two villains, King Radolf and the Masked Man. In my mind, the medieval world I have created reflects real life. We never just have one quest and seldom have only one friend. And we never have only one challenge. But little by little we get progress when we consistently allocate segments of our time on one thing. Does that mean that we ignore everything else and pretend it does not exist? Certainly not. But it does mean that the thing that is right in front of us is most likely what we are going to do. I have kids to educate, clients to help and books to write. I know that on Wednesdays I do client work and on Fridays I do my Chronicles of Nadine newsletters. Between 04H00 and 06H00 each morning, I walk, write my wins and work on my books. Despite my aversion to boredom, I found the best results with consistency.
Before I ramble on anymore, some of my readers who enjoy the complexity of my novels have mentioned that they enjoy the character lists at the end of books 3 and 4. One of them reminded me she had read several books in-between my releases and the lists reoriented her. So to make the list more accessible to all readers, my editor recommended adding the characters to my website. You can check out the link to reacquaint yourself with your favourite characters.
Happy reading
