I love exploring the natural world, hiking or biking. Unfortunately, I rarely get the chance to do so, since I live in a large suburb next door to the fourth-largest city in the country. Also, it’s the Gulf Coast, so it’s flat.

Last week, I took a solo retreat in the Texas Hill Country. My cousin let me stay in a log cabin on her property. That in itself was glorious. Every evening, I could watch spectacular sunsets over the hills. And a couple of hours later, I could look up and see the Milky Way and so many, many stars.

But it gets better. I was staying a short drive away from a State Park, and a State Natural Area, both of which have extensive trails. I went on a nice bike ride at one of them, and a fantastic hike at the other. 

My primary goal for this retreat was to jump-start my writing. It has not been going well for the past year. In fact, it’s dropped off 80% from my highest output.

I’m happy to report that part of the retreat was a great success. I started the week with a set of tiered goals. Tier 1 goals were a challenge, Tier 2 goals were difficult, and Tier 3 goals were highly unlikely, but I added them to the list anyway.

For the book I’m currently working on, Chroma, the final volume of the Dragontek Lore series, I solidified the outline and wrote over 10,000 words in five days. I made contact with my cover artist, and we are now firmly on track to launch this book in December.

The next book I plan on writing is the third book in The Certainty of Blood trilogy. I’ve been struggling with the basic plot line in my head for months. Over this week, I was able to sketch out a solid (but very rough) outline. I’m excited about developing it further as soon as I’m done with Chroma. The current target launch date is June 3, 2025.

In fact, I wrote down a full writing/editing/publishing plan for the next two and a half years. I even wrote a rough outline and character list for the novel coming after the two listed above. All in all, I achieved all of my Tier 1 goals, and two out of three of my Tier 2 goals.

Writing = Jumpstarted