The Art of Heart is the new title for book three (originally announced as “A Fall from Heaven”) and follows The Perfect Gift, picking up the story one year later.

This is definitely the best book of the series. It’s engaging, insightful, and has plenty of adventure, romance, breathtakingly beautiful and impressive moments, and of course all the plot twists typical of this series. It’s also over 100 pages longer than the first two.

From my perspective, what I’ll remember is how darn long it took to write! I’ve had the basic storyline written out in my head for years, and much of the detail written down well, for years, just not as many, but it still took writing day and night for months to let everything finally settle into place.

It was interesting to notice how the plot took on a life of its own, and how events often turned out differently than planned – and how that always turned out better than my outline. It was also interesting to notice how the characters would say things, as I typed out the dialog, that I had never thought of before, and how they came up with some pretty good ideas!

Now that I’ve finished, I’m trying to put the same dedication into getting all caught up on grading my students’ papers. They turned in a major paper on Tuesday and I’ve been recording an average of 8 minutes of commentary on each one which I email them so they can take it into consideration for the next revision. It’s a good system, but time consuming, taking an average of half an hour per paper, which adds up fast!

As I get all caught up there, I need to learn how to play again. I’ve been planning to go watch The Bourne Legacy for over a week now, but every time it’s time to go, I keep deciding to stay and keep working. Until late tonight when I finally broke away. It was good! And as it ended with the shot of the Philippines ocean, I couldn’t help but think how nice it would be to away on my endless round the world trip already. If someone offered my $120k for my house right now, I’d take it and leave the country by January.

Anyway. Bed time. I need my rest so I can get up and grade all day again tomorrow.

Last year, my first Christmas book, Courage, Love and the Meaning of Christmas, reached as high as #412 in books on Amazon.com, which is the top one-fifth of one percent of all books. Not bad! Its sequel also reached the top 1% of books.

Well this year in 2012, I’m hoping not just for a repeat, but to do even better, partly because I’m writing furiously to finish the third and final book in the series. I’ve been working on it off and on for three years now, and for the past many weeks, that means often writing from dawn till well after dark.

I’m hoping to finish this week. It’s coming along well, but there’s still plenty of work left, so we’ll see. I’ll announce it on ChristmasNovels.com and Facebook.com/ChristmasNovels when it comes out, and I’ll eventually let you know here how it goes!

Last month I set up a system for readers of the Courage, Love and the Meaning of Christmas series to be notified as soon as book 3 (A Fall from Heaven) is ready – just send an email to heaven @ shaunroundy .com).

Ever since, as readers have signed up, they’ve also been sharing a lot of nice things about their experience with the series so far. Knowing how eagerly (and sometimes impatiently) they’re waiting for the rest of the story greatly increases the priority of getting that last book finished – though I’m still working out a few key revelations that will ensure that it’s the best of the three.

Since people rarely post to public places like Amazon reviews, I’ll share a few of the comments here (anonymously – I hope they won’t mind!).

This Christmas my favorite reads were by far your series with Spencer and Ski. I would definitely like to be notified when A Fall From Heaven is released in Kindle version. Please add me to list of people waiting patiently (or should I say impatiently) for the sequel!
“Fabulous writing…”

“PS I love your other books. You are an amazing writer!”

“Can’t wait! Please let me know when it is available!”

“Please notify me when this book is available on Kindle. I’ve just read the first two over the last couple weeks and can’t wait for the last! I love how the books make me think and I always feel very optimistic, hopeful and light hearted after reading them. I can relate to all the “thinking” that Spencer does and loved the transformation of Ski. Well done and thank you.”

“Just finished reading the first two books in 3 days! Loved them. Can’t wait to read A Fall from Heaven on my kindle.”

“Love the series! please let notify me when this book becomes available for Kindle.”

“Ok, so you got me hooked on the Courage love and the meaning of Christmas series and I’m very dissapointed that I can’t find anywhere that tells when the final book comes out! I have spent over an hour searching the internet for information about when it comes out!”

“Just finished reading Courage, Love, and the Meaning of Christmas and can’t wait to read A Fall from Heaven! When will it be available on Kindle?”

“Please email me when Fall from Heaven is released. I found first two books were inspirational. I believe that god does work in great ways.”

“Please notify me when Heaven becomes available on Kindle. I LOVE these books.
Thanks,”

Plus this comment that Doug shared over on my /author page:

Shaun
My wife and I just finished your two Christmas Novels. I had been wanting to read a Christmas themed novel together and fortunately I found your books on Amazon at an incredible Kindle price.
I wanted to share that we read every page of these two books together. We both recently bought iPads and the Kindle format triggered the plan. We sat together and took turns reading to each other. We even read together a couple nights when I was out of town via cell phone.
We finished The Perfect Gift today after reading three hours straight. We can’t wait for Book Three. We enjoyed your writing style and found many introspective topics to ponder and meditate on. We also enjoyed the venues and emotional struggles and progression of all your characters. We could see the books on the big screen.
We look forward to reading some of your other books soon, but especially “A Fall From Heaven”. We think your students have a great talent to learn from.
Thanks”

Thanks, everyone, for the feedback and motivation! I’ll get it done as soon as possible!

In fact, I’ll release it first on Kindle which will allow me to do minor revisions before going to print. Sign up via the email mentioned above to be the first to know, or like facebook.com/christmasnovels where it will get announced second.

So if you would like to do something very easy that would be a big help to me, please Like my Christmas Novels facebook page:

Once I get about 30 likers, I can register a nice, short facebook URL to use in other marketing.

Thanks!!! I appreciate your support.