Many of the people who know me personally call me “the busiest person they know.” Statements like this began an inner quest to understand my drives behind what I do and why I write. I reexamined my priorities and my life long goals. Over the last three months I have not posted anything new on my blogs. Despite my desire to share my writing with others the simple fact is that my number 1 priority is to be a consistently published novelist and a consistently published poet.

When I examined the time I have to actually write per week, I was dismayed to see how little time I have—despite sleeping only 4 to 6 hours a day. Then I looked at my writing production over the last year, including blogs and saw just how over blogged I am. My goal, as I stated above, is to be a consistently published novelist and poet. Yet, most of my writing time was being spent writing blogs and articles for the internet. I was blogging nine different topics a week. That is at least nine hours a week. This may not sound like much to many of my readers. However, with everything I have to juggle in my life, nine hours is often the only amount of time I have in a week to write. Meanwhile I am working on 8 novels (one is Dark Medicine) and 4 poetry collections. Something had to give.

As such, I am changing my schedule of blogging all together. I will keep my Coffee with David blog, going on a consistent weekly basis. My others will be as I have time or a pressing matter to share.

Thank you for reading and checking this blog from time to time. Please continue to follow me on Coffee With David as I share the “behind the scenes life” of this writer who is determined to reach his goals in life: That goal is to publish 300 novels and 80 poetry collections over the next forty years. I know how insane that may sound, but that is my goal should God let me live that long.

While the editor is still working on Episode 1 and I on Episode 2, I have received some comments that look to rewriting parts of the first episode. If you have read my last Coffee with David entry, you will have seen that I acknowledge difficulties in writing romance. While Dark Medicine is a Gothic Horror, it does have romantic entanglements in it. These relationships are not as strong as I would like them to be.

As a result, I am delaying the release of the other web serials I am working on to get Dark Medicine where I want it to be. Further, there is a writers conference that I am attending next weekend and I will be taking a few of the workshops on romance writing. I hope to come out of that with some tips that will improve Dark Medicine.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for articles, blogs, poetry, and stories I write.

After a long review of the rough draft of Dark Medicine and seeing where things didn’t work, I am happy to announce that I have Series 1 (or is that season 1?) in rough draft form. I am currently breaking it up into episodes and editing them. The approximate length of each episode should be 5000 words.

The editing of this draft also breathes new life into the story and I think offers the opportunity to bridge the plot better than the original novel. As you may have read in earlier posts, Dark Medicine has an “army” of characters, which actually lead to the original plot line’s collapse. In the web serial version, it will be an enrichment.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for more articles, blogs, poetry, and stories that I write.

Weeks ago I wrote a blog that I did not post. The blog was a farewell to this story. I had become discouraged by walking around the bookstores and seeing all the modern ideas of vampires and seeing that Dark Medicine may not have a place on the shelves at this time. Additionally, the publishing market, because of the economy, is less willing to publish virtual unknown authors without a proven track record. This is an oxymoron, but I can understand it from their point of view. Any novel is a risk. A new novel by an unknown author even more of a risk. I thought at the time that I would place Dark Medicine in a drawer and return to it in 10 years.

That has all changed. I have decided to gamble by turning this novel into a web serial. Starting in August, I will release episodes from this story and what would have been its sequels in a monthly installment on my website (http://www.davidalanlucas.com/dark_medicine_teaser.htm). I realize that this will make the novel unsellable to an agent or a publisher. At this time, that is not the goal any longer. The goal is to get this story out to you, my readers, and see how it does. If the readership is good, then I will have something for which to take to potential agents and show. If not, then I can learn from this experience.

This blog is back and will be posted on a weekly basis as the Serial takes shape. Are you ready for the gothic adventure? I will promise you, it will not be Twilight or True Blood. It will be a gothic supernatural story exploring the light and the darkness of the human soul—with a bite.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for updates to the articles, blogs, poems, and stories that I write.

Sadly, I must admit that I have not had a chance to touch Dark Medicine this week. I do not like being behind, but life forces reprioritization. For details, please see the Coffee With David blog posted this week.

The re-plotting is going much better than I had expected. I left off with a new twist on one of the places I had made a misstep on. Also, the changes throw the characters into new dilemmas that will let the original plot line still exist but cross several books. I wish I could share with my readers here the details of what I am doing—I would make a lousy magician as I always want to say “see, here is what I am doing”—but I can’t.

My goal has not changed. I still intend to have Dark Medicine re-rough drafted by the end of February.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for information on the blogs, stories, poems, and articles I write.