Hex of the Dragon Fruit has been one of those on-again, off-again books for me. I came up with the idea for the book two years ago, eager to come up with a bold, new fantasy world. Even though I was deep into developing the Zachary Gagewood Mysteries, creating Hex of the Dragon Fruit was something I felt I needed to, and I figured that if I was hitting a block on one book, it would be good to work on a second book simultaneously that I could jump to and keep the creative juices flowing.

It didn’t quite work out that way.

With my day job requiring a lot of extra hours while we were extremely shorthanded, it made it difficult to find time or energy for any kind of writing, much less two books at once. Whenever I found the motivation to write, I stuck with the mysteries, as I had set up a schedule to get those done. Hex of the Dragon Fruit kind of went by the wayside.

However, two things happened to bring this fantasy back to the front burner.

First, I finished the draft for Murder at the Frybread Contest, and I usually take six weeks to two months to work on the edits. Editing the book doesn’t usually take as long as writing the first draft, so that left me time available to focus on other writing. That alone was not enough, though.

The second factor was that I was finally able to take some vacation time. A new editor coming on board provided a second person who could design the pages for the newspaper. After 18 months of working overtime, I was finally able to take a week off and not have to think about the news. That allowed me to focus exclusively on Hex of the Dragon Fruit.

Focus, I did. I was able to write three full chapters and then some in the course of a week. I would sit down in the morning, figuring I’d write a page or two, and sometimes I put my head back up and discovered it was afternoon and I’d written four, five, even eight pages—and keep in mind, I’m talking 8½ by 11 sheets of paper, which can equal two to three pages in a regular book. It helped to have an outline that I crafted in the beginning showing what was supposed to take place in each chapter.

Once I got that boost, I spent much of December writing Hex of the Dragon Fruit during my spare moments. I had plenty of them, as I was starting to work fewer hours, partly because I had someone to handle more of the workload but mainly because I had to burn vacation time. I went from being at the end of Chapter 9 to working on the middle of Chapter 16 in the course of a month. The book is supposed to be 20 chapters and will likely pass the 450-page mark (book-sized pages) by the time it’s all said and done.

Besides being motivated to tackle Hex of the Dragon Fruit again, I also started thinking of expanding its reach. With all of my other books, I published ebooks and in paperback through Amazon. Now, however, I’m also planning to publish the book in hardcover through Barnes & Noble Press. That’s requiring me to learn new formats for both the manuscript and the cover, which comes with a dust jacket.

For most authors who work with traditional publishing companies, publishing in hardcover comes first, and then after a period, the book comes out in paperback. Until recently, hardcover books weren’t an affordable option for self-publishers, and then Barnes & Noble revised its press system, giving authors the choice of publishing platforms. I wasn’t sure I was ready to put the mysteries in hardcover form yet, but I figured Hex of the Dragon Fruit would be a good test of the new system.

I’m also toying with the possibility of doing Hex of the Dragon Fruit as an audiobook. Amazon has a platform that offers audiobook options, but I hadn’t considered it seriously until a recent get-together with the Shawano Area Writers. Some of the members commented on my dramatic readings and said I should do audiobooks, and it got me thinking, why not? It might be an interesting career change to consider.

This book is definitely the longest project I’ve worked on, both in word count and in time, but this fantasy novel is coming together in ways that I couldn’t have imagined. I look forward to when the book can be published, and others can fall under the hex.