The "What Next?" Of Writing

I finally finished The Prince and The Lionheart, the second novel in my trilogy. This novel was very problematic and it's going to take a lot of work when I finally get around to editing, but writing a book isn't supposed to be easy. The book was finished at 210 pages with 132,262 words and seventeen chapters, which isn't anywhere near the length of the first one when I finished it, but that's okay. It gives me more room to fix everything and not have to worry about it being too long, because the first book in the trilogy, The Daughter of Robin Hood, is turning into a monster with all of the editing that needs to be done.

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Before I go on, let me tell you what these two books are about. It starts with the first one, The Daughter of Robin Hood. The title may say it all, but it's about Lenora Hood, but she's known as Lee by her close friends and family. She ran away from her father when she was sixteen. She formed her own band of thieves and three years later, she's nineteen and tired of running, but before she goes into a permanent hiding, she tells her band of thieves that she wants to pull off one last heist. She wants to steal the prince's fortune. But not just any prince, Prince Nikola of Hoods Windsor.
When Robin Hood and his Merry Men succeeded in overthrowing the Sheriff of Nottingham, Richard the Lionhearted returned and to prevent the crimes of the Sheriff ever happening again, they formed twelve new kingdoms to ease taxes and make it fairer for the people. Hoods Windsor was named after Robin Hood himself, and Locksley rests at it's borders. Lee thinks that if she can steal Prince Nikola's fortune, it will prove to everyone that she's greater than her father, because she not only stole from the place she had come from, but because she had done something he never would have done.
However, things don't go according to plan. Not only is her father there, but she ends up falling in love with the prince, something she promised she wouldn't do. She needs to decide whether she wants to continue being the wanted thief or if she wants to be the good guy from now on and do the right thing for once.

By explaining the next book, I'm probably going to give away the ending of The Daughter of Robin Hood. Oops.
The Prince and The Lionheart follows Lee and her band of thieves, but she's made amends with her father and he's brought his Merry Men into the mix too. Besides that, Nikola denounced his crown and ran off with them. They're outlaws now, and they need to figure out how to stop King Matthew, Nikola's father, from being a tyrant. They discover that the kingdoms are splitting and people are taking sides, but they're not sure why. They also discover that Nikola's eight year old brother is being abused so Lee sends him, one of her thieves and Nikola's best friend off to Hoods Windsor to save them. Getting his little brother out of the castle isn't as easy as he thought it would be, because of this guy named Crevan Delaney. He's the Sheriff of Nottingham's son and he has it it out for Lee because he's seeking revenge for his late father.
As for Lee, Robin, her band of thieves and the Merry Men, King Leon, Richard the Lionhearted's son, invites them to join a council that's trying to figure out just the same things as Lee: how to stop the tyranny and save the people. It's a council of kings and thieves. Lee quickly realizes that no one trusts her and her thieves because of their bad reputations, so she decides to take action against this and vanish so they can operate quietly and earn everyone's trust.

After typing that out, I can't tell whether that paragraph is shorter because the book is shorter or if there just isn't as much to say about this novel. Huh.

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Just like the first one, I reached the last line and saved the document and felt like it wasn't quite finished yet, but there was nothing left to write. The ending wasn't emotional enough and the timeline needs fixed, among other things that need fixed, but that was left for another day because I was so excited. And then I was wondering, "what now?" There was nothing left to write in The Prince and The Lionheart. No more scenes, no more chapters, no more information that the reader needs to know. There's just one unrelated scene that I want to write for my own pleasure, and it has no place in the novel. But after I write that little scene? I could go back to editing the first book, but I'm a little stuck and I'm making it longer than it needs to be and I don't have very much confidence in that book. I could edit book two, but after I just finished that pain in the neck of a book, I want to take a break from Lee's world.

My plan is to hopefully write a modern day novel called The Faultless Stars. I almost wrote this novel for Camp NaNoWriMo in July (50,000 words in 31 days), but I had already started The Prince and The Lionheart and didn't want to stop. The Faultless Stars (or code name, Space: The Final Frontier) was something that happened when I was hanging out with my friend and just randomly said "it would be cool to write a novel like Doctor Who about the wonder of the universe except it would be hard to keep it from being too much like Doctor Who." So it resulted in a Pinterest board called Space: The Final Frontier (the pinterest board), and it was just a collection of pictures concerning space.
Was. It was.
It became an idea with a real title. The main character is Corrie Parvin. She had a crappy high school experience. Her parents are millionaires with a million dollar business, so Corrie was Miss Popular in high school and was more concerned about popularity and friends and appearances. It didn't help that her parents were more concerned about their business and crumbling relationship than their daughter. Corrie thought she needed the attention, but her parents started fighting and Corrie was losing friends and fast. When she graduated, her parents split up and gave her the choice between staying in Chicago or going to L.A., but Corrie ran off to NYC instead. She met some good friends there and become a Christian. It was a completely fresh start for her.
A few years later, and she's lost her best friend because he made a mistake. it's Christmastime and she's alone once again, but then she meets this guy. To everyone else he's a crazed man that belongs in a mental hospital, but to Corrie, he's the escape she needs. Everyone he's met in New York City calls him The Star Man, and he doesn't know what else to call himself so he takes up the nickname, but Corrie decides he looks more like a Finn. He tells her all of these stories of how he traveled space and went farther than anyone ever should have, and also how he left who he used to be out there. Corrie wants to get away so she doesn't have to be alone, so they go to outer space to find what Finn left behind in the stars.
But it is't even about them. I thought their story was about the stars, but in the end, it isn't really that either. I'm drawn to this novel because it's finally something that heavily involves Christianity and God. Corrie relies heavily on her faith in God and she knows she would be a train wreck without Him. It makes me really happy to finally bring that into my writing. I'm excited to start writing this. It's waited long enough.

p.s. in case you're wondering, the third book in the trilogy is going to be called The Sins of Their Fathers and I plan on writing it in November for Nation Novel Writing Month (50,000 words in 30 days) so my goal is to hopefully start and finish The Faultless Stars by then.