The day has come! The second installment in the Essence of Ohr Series, Children of the Volcano is out now.
Amazon US: https: //www.amazon.com/dp/B08XC6YV8C?tag=evolvepubli06-20
B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/children-of-the-volcano-parris-sheets/1138889966?ean=2940165127014
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1071000
I had a mixture of emotions while writing this book. The initial excitement of continuing Kole's story started strong and carried well through the halfway point of the story. Then, unexpectedly, trouble hit.
One morning, I booted up my computer and clicked the file for the first draft to start my writing day. An error window popped up. File cannot be found. I figured the window was from a user error, so I restarted my computer, logged back in, and made sure to click the USB where my work was saved.
That same window popped up.
I felt the blood drain from my face. I immediately went and phoned my husband. He's a computer genius, so I figured he could figure out the situation. I explained the problem to him, but after a few tests he had me do, he deemed he'd need a closer look. I waited impatiently until he returned from work, going back and forth from denial to full out crying thinking I had lost my entire draft of Children of the Volcano.
When he finally got home, he got straight to work, but soon realized, the USB I had been saving on had died. Completely died. He tried every program to recover the files, but the thing had fried.
I had a meltdown. I full on panicked, freaked out. I had saved everything on that USB. Warden's Reign, Children of the Volcano, all my outlines—every piece of writing I had. I searched my computer and my google drive for my book files. Luckily, I found some backups of Warden's Reign in its completed form. But book 2? The last save I had was from months ago. On the fired USB lay a 50k word rough draft. But the only copy I had was the 25k draft.
I had lost half my book. Months of progress gone in a day.
Needless to say, I went to a dark place for a few days. My will to write on had been zapped because all I could think about were the words I'd lost.
It took a week to come back to my computer. My sheer will to have this story out compelled me to get back to the grind and replace the story that I'd lost.
And that's what I did. My friends, family, and writer buddies encouraged me saying that the second time writing it would be better. As hard as it was to replace all that work, I did it and they were right: I felt better about it.
After that experience, I back up my writing on several platforms. That will never happen to me again. Looking back on it now, I can recognize it as a moment of growth. But oh boy, I'm really glad that's over.