That was surprisingly fast. I wasn’t expecting to hear from L. Jagi Lamplighter about the second volume of Jake and the Dynamo until late next month at the earliest, but she got right on that thing and burned through it. She said she usually moves much slower through a manuscript, but read 250 pages of Dead to Rites in one sitting because she was enjoying it. That’s certainly encouraging. She also says she thinks it is much more polished than the previous manuscript was, which is to me a complete surprise, since drafting the last few chapters involved about four weeks of torture.
So I’m once again tabling Son of Hel until I can get Dead to Rites out the door for good. I don’t know if I’ll manage to have Son of Hel out by this Christmas, especially since I’m beginning to realize how much research it will demand if I’m really to do the topic justice. I know a lot of other writers who crank out four or more books a year, but I have no idea how they do it. I’m simply not that prolific.
Heck, I have a hard time just keeping up with this blog. While I’ve been pounding away at this novel, I have felt the magical girl genre slipping away from me. It’s sure exploded in the last few years with tons of works out of Japan and imitators from elsewhere, and I simply can’t keep up. I actually haven’t been watching much anime at all lately.
Anyway, I’m going to go look at the comments on my manuscript, but before I go, I’ll leave you with the Dead to Rites unofficial theme song. For the first volume, you may recall I chose the power love ballad “You’re Mine” from Disturbed, but for this second volume, I think this old classic is more fitting:
