Yesterday I posted an update of my latest Corrosive Knights book (you can read the full update here).  As I mentioned there, I’m now revising the first “full” draft of book #7 in the series, which will conclude the series’ main story.

Toward the end of the post, I created and put up this picture:I didn’t think all that much of it when I created and posted it in the still in-progress blog entry, but when I published the entry and looked back at the whole thing I got…

…emotional.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t tear up or cry or howl at the moon or give myself high fives.  Instead, seeing the published entry, I did have feelings.

Pleasant feelings.

The first, primary feeling was one of pride.  The second was one of relief.

The pride part is easy enough to explain.  Whatever job you have, and especially if it is one you enjoy, whenever you accomplish something “big” after plenty of hard work doing it and are happy with the way things turned out, then you should feel pride.  You should feel like patting your back.

I’ve noted far too many times before that writing a book is extremely difficult work, at least to me.  The amount of time spent on a single novel, much less eight novels that form a series, is very hard.  There are many characters and situations to keep in mind.  There are so many events and repercussions to deal with.  Finally, I was determined to deliver something fresh and new and interesting and was extremely careful not to have any story devolve into cliche.

So when I looked at yesterday’s post and saw that image, all that hard work was right there in that single graphic.

Sure, books #7 and 8 aren’t out yet, but at this time both novels are written.  The only thing keeping me from releasing them is the work needed to clean them up so they can be released.

Otherwise, this series -at least from the creative writing side- is done and, to my mind, done well.

That’s where the feeling of relief comes in.

After all these years -indeed much of my adult life- as of yesterday the process is almost done and, most importantly, it works.

After so many small and large steps, so many days and months and years of hard work, of whole days and weeks spent working on one particular segment of one particular book and sweating out how that would mesh with other parts of said book…

…I’m suddenly here, nearing the end of this long, wonderful journey.

As I said before, it has not been easy, but there’s nothing better than seeing the fruits of your labor and realizing you’re not just nearly done, but that you’ve done well.

I can’t wait for you guys and gals to see the next two books.

If you liked what came before, you will love what comes next.