Filling my computer with books.

I'm basically filling my computer with books.  (Cloud backup).

I'm actually starting to lose track of how many books I've written.  Some of it is in a grey area -- does completely rewriting an old book from beginning to end make it more or less a new book?

How about if I just keep track of how many books have a solid first draft and may someday be published?

It's a lot.

And I'm just going to keep going.

I'm 50,000 words into Deeptower.  It has come very easy.  The plot just came together, the characters.  It helps that I did most of the world building in Deviltree.  There is no way this book isn't going to be finished, now that I'm this far.  I have the ending in sight.

After that,  I've got at least three or four series going that could be continued. 

The Spellworld fantasy books. (These books are an inchoate mess, contradictory, premise faulty, and of different tones.  But I think they are the same world.)

The Cobb and Co. dark fantasy books.  I really like the characters and the premise and have a number of ideas for books.

The Virginia Reed historical horror books.  I ended up liking the main character so much that I want to continue writing about her.

The Deeptower books.  The whole premise of a mystical well that connects worlds is designed to be a series.

I've finished The Vampire Evolution Trilogy, with the third book hitting the airwaves in about a month.  I'm thinking of binding all three books into one book, and offering that along with the single books.

I'm torn between trying to write something completely new, or continuing writing on the worlds I've already constructed.  My inclination is to continue on the different series until I run out of ideas.  Use them as practice.  Keep learning to write by writing. 

Truth is, I don't know what I'm going to write next until it happens.  I had no idea I was going to write a sequel to Deviltree.  I didn't know that Death of an Immortal was part of a trilogy.  I started writing Wolflander, my sequel to Faerylander, while the first book was still an unmanageable mess.

I'm just guessing, but I suspect my next effort will probably be another "Lander" book, but it could be the middle book in the Spellworld series, or possibly a complete rewrite of the first book.  I'm trying to fit in a rewriting session between each new book.

I don't know how long this will continue.  I have a memory of being completely stumped after my original third book was published.  The 4th and 5th books were just wandering in darkness, and reading them these many years later, I'm astonished by how much of a dropoff in quality there was between Icetowers and Bloodstone.  The 4th and 5th books just can't be saved,  even for someone as prolific as me.  Truth was, I just didn't have a book until Deviltree came along.

The period of time between buying the store and this latest writing period (25 years!)  wasn't really a blockage.  It was simply a recognition that I needed to make a living.  It was a suspension of writing -- that just lasted a whole hell of a lot longer than I expected.

So I know that I could hit a roadblock at any time, so it seems to me to make sense to keep filling my computers with original material as long as they keep coming to me. 

As I keep saying -- the writing of books and the marketing of books are two completely different processes.  And my inclination is to spend all my time on the former, rather than the latter. 

Even if all it does is fill my computer with books.