I broke 67K words on the first draft of my second novel “Blood Game” today.  By my estimation, this puts be somewhere between 75% and 80% done.  Once finished, my plan is to set it aside for a month or two and go back and make revisions to the first novel (“Burn Card”), based on good feedback from several agents and acquisitions editors.

I had to take some time today to revise the outline of my last half-dozen chapters.  The story took a few unexpected turns as I was writing it, which is one of my favorite things to happen.  I love it when my characters come to life and make better decisions in the moment than I made for them when I was outlining.  I love it when my characters come alive.  I love it when they teach me something….

…the way my kids often do.

One of the many reasons my writing has slowed down the last few months is that I’ve been writing a Dungeons and Dragons campaign for my three kids.  My long-distance girlfriend (and alpha-reader and City Owl Press editor) Becka often joins us via zoom.  Chaos, Mayhem, and Havoc – ages 15, 13, and 11 respectively – got into D&D several months ago, and it’s been a lot of screen-free fun for all of us.

We play the 2^nd edition rules rather than the modern rules, because their father is older than a demi-lich.

I never realized as a kid how much writing is involved in creating a good campaign.  Maybe that’s because I was just a dice-rolling slaughter fiend back then, all about the slaying and the leveling up.

It’s different now that I’m a writer.  My villain had plans within plans.  Treachery and deceit.  The monsters aren’t just lurking around the next corner of the dungeon, waiting for brave adventures to kill them – they have plans of their own.  They have duties, loyalties, and goals.  Now that I’m a writer, I can’t just create cardboard characters anymore.  I know better now.

And best of all, the heroes aren’t my characters.  They’re my kids’ characters.  I can steer them various ways with planned situations and the occasional “dragon ex machina,” but they ultimately choose the direction of the story.  It’s like they’re my co-authors.  I enjoy this very much.

So the other day, the months-long multi-part grand campaign finally boiled down to one last titanic battle, and my kids had the evil wizard “Toribal the Cruel” on the ropes.  They could have destroyed him with the next swing of a sword, ending his horrible plans and saving the realm.  Which is exactly what I had planned for them to do.

And instead, they decided to spare him, and try to find a way to restore him to the good mage he once was, before [blah blah long story not important here blah].  They forgave him and insisted on healing him and redeeming him.  I was nearly in tears.  It was the kind of fist-pump moment any father needs if he’s ever wondered whether he brought his kids up right.

They’re great kids.  Better than me, that’s for damned sure.

So of course I improvised and came up with a plausible way for this to happen.  “Toribal the Reborn” is now a member of their party. My kids came up with a better ending that I could have imagined.

I love it when my characters teach me something.