We are now four books into the Needing Harming series and I thought why not? More insight into this series! Because they're fun. If you haven't yet, check out this fourth book - Holding the Tempo.
I stand by what I said in the first insight for this series. This is an emotion roller coaster to write. I cry. I take walks. And sometimes, they affect my dreams. And the songs...every single time I hear the final product of my song, I bawl my eyes out. In a good way. I'm an author, a writer of words on a page in the format of a book. Not a songwriter. In fact, I'm pretty terrible with music.
This has been a huge learning curve. One I'm happy to explore. And the biggest learning curve of Holding the Tempo? Writing a rap song AND a heavy metal song! Yup, you read it correctly. Now, who do you think these songs belong to?
(This is an image of when I was trying to see how titles looked in the fonts.)
Interesting Facts:
This book was max going to be five books. It's officially going to six and I finally have the ending clearly in my mind! Also...for some strange reason unknown to me, many thought this was going to be a trilogy. I hope it's a good surprise that this is double that! (I really do wonder why I kept getting comments about it being a trilogy).
I didn't officially title this book until I began revisions. Possible titles were:
Shifting Dynamics
Changing Dynamics
The Big Crescendo
All that Jazz
Ring a Bell
Change Your Tune
Face the Music
A Broken Record
Strikes a Cord
I'm glad I settled on Holding the Tempo. I think it fits the book rather well. And I pretty much have the titles of the last two books named (and no, they are not in that list above. I purposely kept them out). Though, who knows - maybe I'll go back to one of those.
This book I was going to bring in a certain person...but the plot is moving slower than I expected believe it or not. In fact, this particular person was going to come into play in like the second book...but then other stuff happened. That's the fun and the danger of trying to write a series. Things change, even when we don't plan for it. But I like those changes. As characters become real, they decide to react a little bit more differently than you expect. Unfortunately, for a certain character, that means their time to shine keeps getting pushed back.
I want to expand a little bit more on Number 4 above. This book went from something that was going to be like four or five books, more closely to four. Heck, even earlier on, it was just going to be like two books when this series was only a thought. But now, the official book count is six books. Plots change, ideas shift, and as someone who loves writing series, I tend to write slower story lines.
And let's be real, this is taking place in the fall time, when all the fun things are happening between start of school, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Plus two of the guys are into sports. It's been a challenge to skip ahead. We are four books in and by the end of this book, we get just past Thanksgiving. Next book, we'll get past Christmas. And I wanted the series to end as she finishes high school. Which means, I have to figure out how to cover spring in the last book haha. Time skips are so hard to deal with when I don't want to miss all the juicy fun events.
It'll happen though. I promise. I have thoughts and ideas and plans.
Keeping track of everything has been extremely interesting. I created spreadsheets. Redid them. Again and again. I did eventually settle on something that 'works' but let's be real. It doesn't. But hey, at least I know exactly what day of the week it is, and even if it's a gym day or a study hall day (alternating classes).
I'm serious, look:
Trying to fit Paxon's soccer schedule in there was a mess, and I'm pretty sure completely wrong. I don't get soccer (or any sport, really). I still need to do Justin's swim schedule since that season starts next book.
This series has been such a cathartic and pleasure to right. It's helped me in many ways and I hope it has helped others too. At the very least, I hope people are enjoying Cadence's journey and are willing to keep reading to the end.
I appreciate anyone who has invested in this series. I love you all to bits.
