Moments for the Heart

Temporary Synopsis:

Masters has retired and Grady now leads the team. All seems well until a series of murders take place that resemble the killings four years ago. Grady receives a call from Masters that he has discovered something at a local warehouse. A gun runner is using a long forgotten facility. Are the two events related? As the team is split between the two events that are tearing apart their city, it is a matter of time before an old enemy resurfaces and extends a challenge none of them expects.

7/26/2025: Just adding a post to let y’all know I’m still here. No real update, but that is expected. We probably wont hear much until mid-September. We are usually acting under the gun. So, I won’t be fretting as I have been the last couple of releases. Nope. Not me. Not at all. I wont. Nope…

3/24/2025: Also you see that the word count on the book above shows 60,800. But that is just what was written during NaNoWriMo. The actual wordcount for The Transference II is 110,000. Yeah, a bit long. The first book was 92,000.

3/24/2025: I can’t beleive its been almost two years. The Transference II is complete. I finished the final edit today. I will be sending it to WordCrafts tomorrow. It had been originally set for an October release date, but with The Five Barred Gate II having a late release, TII may have a delay as well. So may authors are out there, WordCrafts is backed up. That is exciting more than discouraging. I love that so many authors are getting out there and having their works published.

I am still submitting it with the intention of our original plan, but we shall see. So keep your eye out and I will update you with what WordCrafts tells me when my contract for this book is signed.

I am excited to get this one out there. It was fun to write and I am weighing a third. Not quite sure yet. It feels this may be a two and done. We shall see if inspiration hits. Thank you for your support. I look forward to your reviews and thoughts on this novel.

7/1/2024: Editing continues. Something like NaNoWriMo is happening in July. It is called Camp NaNoWriMo. It is basically the same thing, but occurs in July instead of November. I am using this time to clean up and edit. I need to get this book ready. I know I have until next year, but this book needs a lot of work if I plan to cut it down from 130K to 100K. I am working with the timeline and it proving to be a challenge. We shall see what happens the deeper I get into things and when the action starts. — I am mainly doing this because there were times when nothing seemed to be happening and I was writing a bunch of filler just to get to ‘the date’ when everything was to occur. So I am thinking that by moving the dates up I can cut a bunch of filler scenes that could be boring or redundant. Let’s see.

3/22/24: I have begun edits. Thought I would wait a bit longer, but here we are. I completed The Five Barred Gate II and now it sits a bit and I will send that to WordCrafts in early April. This book wont be released until October 26 of next year. So we have plenty of time, but it needs that time. I am nervous about getting into it. I think I am going to do quite a bit of cutting as it is 125K. I want to get it under 100K. I know how to do it, I just need to figure how I am going to work it. It is a major timeline shift. I just need to look at where and what it affects.

I am also realizing I have an extra character. One that I though I cut as I was writing the first go around. But this character is here, so let’s see how this person affects the story and if I do in fact need to cut them or if they affect the story at all. I honestly don’t remember at this point. I guess they disappear at some point because I know they are not around at the end of the story. I don’t remember if I erased them or eliminated them. We shall see what my writer’s mind did with them.

1/22/24: I now regret not keeping this page up to speed. I went through so much writing this book, that is now complete. I could’ve use the forum to vent my frustrations. There were quite a few. First of all, speaking in hindsight, the novel is 120K words. That is by far the longest piece I have ever written. Even The the first book was only 90K. If we talk in terms of NaNoWriMo, that goal is only supposed to be 50K. So I wrote two and a half NaNo’s worth of content. I struggled through a good portion of it because I made the error of messing up the timeline. So, in a way I feel like I may have been forcing some things to happen. That could’ve been the reason for the length.

It’s all good though. I will see what needs to be done and fix it when I edit. That is after a little while on the shelf. I plan to first edit and publish The Five Barred Gate II. With the dystopian nature of that series, I feel I need to focus on that one first. You can catch up with that HERE!!

9/2/2023: Okay. So here we are. I have written four chapters so far. I have somewhat of an idea where the book is going and am excited for it. The Synopsis above gives you an idea as well. I will be sharing snippets of the book probably for the next few months over on my blog. So you can follow along with me. NaNoWriMo begins in November, so I am a little ahead of the game. But being so busy and I write more than 50K, so I want to just keep pace. I think Transference I was 90K. So there is plenty of space, and time. Not sure if you came here from the snippet link, or if you came here first, but if you came here first, here is the link to the snippet. I would love to hear your comments.

8/20/2023: So much has happened since the last time I wrote. I have developed the entire novel. I have created my fenceposts and am ready to begin writing come November 1st. I even wrote what will probably become the prologue to the book. It was fun to write and even got approval from the big boss. She loved it and got her famous, “Ayeee.” When I get that, I know it’s good. So I am thrilled and excited to get started.

As always I need to find the balance to keep God in this. I know all my work should be God inspired. I want to be a Christian writer and not a writer that is a Christian. This go around I want to lean more toward having God in the book than feel that I am just plugging Him into it.

But I will admit, it was fun writing that first little bit. I am excited to get back into James Grady’s world. And with this new inspiration. I will most likely participate in NaNoWriMo23. I had originally planned to take the year off.

8/7/2023: Since I am writing updates on everything else today, I figured I would throw a bone for this idea today as well.

The Transference II is still just a note in a journal at this point. It is two dreams I have had that may eventually be conjoined into one book. Although with the way the ideas play out, it leaves the door open for either a two-parter or another book. But written correctly I can just put the part that seems like a cliff-hanger within the book itself. It seems very exciting to me to write. But with all that I have going on, it probably wont see the light of day, to even write until 2025. Depressing, yes, but all in good time.

I want to focus on one book at a time and Little Reminders III is 2023, and The Five Barred Gate will be 2024. I tried to do two books in one year for The Transference I, and it screwed things up with Little Reminders II. And The Transference I did not get the attention it deserved and sales were not where I wanted them. I will allow God to direct me and we shall see how it goes and even if I should write this book, as the way it looks, it follows the same dark path as the first book took. And I have already more than one person tell me they couldn’t finish it.

I have been asked if there would be a second book in this series and I have said with an emphatic, “NO! The Transference is a standalone novel.”

Well… things may change. Now, most of you know that my novels are based on dreams I’ve had. And while The Transference was exaggerated a bit, most of it was verbatim. If you haven’t read it, I don’t want to give away too much, but the overall process of what happens was in the dream. How it happens was stretched a bit.

Now what happens when you say that something is never going to happen again? Well, low and behold, I go and have another dream. Yes, something along the same lines. Actually this time it was two dreams about a year apart. The first one I had I filed away in my dream journal. I didn’t really think much about it. There was a ‘possibility’ of it leading to something for Grady because it was a law enforcement dream. Then, about a month ago I had another dream about a detective training a newbie. Putting the two stories together made a great sequel to The Transference. The story is born.

Not completely sure how the first book will play into it, but perhaps the first book really never ended. If you have read it you understand what I mean. But that could go two ways. Again if you have read the book, interesting, right?

We shall see how this plays out. But with Little Reminders coming out this year (2023) and I have The Five Barred Gate on the back burner for 2024. Who knows when this will see the light of day. I still need to outline and write the puppy. I may write it during NaNoWriMo 2024. (I am taking 2023 off so I can focus on marketing LRIII and then getting FBGII out without having another book to worry about.)

I will keep you posted readers. I know The Transference fans are anticipating this sequel. I know my wife is. She loved the first book.