A Long Way To Go

Hello, internet people. Thought I'd post a little update on the writing process and all the other jazz, so here we go.

I've been chugging along on Book 3, slowly bumping up my word count as my characters all try to deal with the fallout from the ending of Book 2. The back half of August was pretty decent for writing, but boy, have I been doing great here in September, so far. I've only missed a handful of days and managed to stay on a pretty good roll, which has brought the draft to just over 75K words. That's already as long as some shorter novels, but I'm nowhere near done this story yet. There's so much to do, so many continuing threads to tie together, along with the new ones that invariably show up when writing a sequel and with the six different POV's, there's just a lot to get through.

With all these perspectives, I've decided to break the story into parts, with the first part following 3 of the characters and the second following the other 3. The third part will see them all joined, and will likely be the shortest part, as the way the story is going, the ending will only take up a half dozen chapters, maybe.

It's been kinda weird writing this book, as most of what I've written so far has been the direct continuation of The Forsaken's ending and the consequences of it. And in writing that, I haven't hardly begun to work with the main self-contained problem for this book. Normally, you see the problem very soon in a book and I'm a little concerned about how long it's taking this time, but I believe that while I'm continuing the end of the last book, I'm giving enough to keep readers engaged before they actually start the new adventure. It's all new territory for me and I hope it works out. I do think that I've now reached the point where I can mostly focus on the new problem, the new villains, while still including all the repercussions of The Forsaken. I'm actually quite excited for the new storyline, as there are completely new people, groups and places to explore that have hardly even been mentioned before, or just in passing. Different characters will take the reins in different roles and situations and I think it'll be great, seeing these familiar people dealing with stuff that is really far above their pay-grade as only half-trained knights.

The first draft is going to be really long, no matter how I do it and I'll have a heck of an edit after that, trying to cut it down to a respectable length. I really don't care too much about word count, like many authors do, but I don't want it to be a ridiculous amount longer than the previous 2. That being said, the most important thing to me is that the story is told, completely told, with no important parts, no character arcs, no big plot points left out. My theory is, if the story is compelling, which I hope mine are, it doesn't matter how long it is. If I like something, I'm gonna want as much of it as possible.

So, we'll just have to see how it all pans out and hopefully that will be within the next several months. I would absolutely love if I could be done this draft early next year. There's a lot to get through, but if I can keep my momentum going, I should be able to make my goal. Besides, both my other books had their first drafts completed in January, so why not aim for that again?

Quick update on how Book 2 is faring. I've sold a good 30 some copies of it, which is not quite as good as the first one, but I kinda expected that, as a lot of people from around home bought the first one to see what it was like and if it wasn't their cup of tea, they didn't buy the second. Totally understandable. But I do have a handful that are spoken for that I need to ship out, bringing the total upward of 40. I'm happy with that number after just over 2 months. I haven't heard back from many who've bought it, it seems most are slow readers, but the few who have left me great feedback and reviews. Their reactions to the ending are just what I had been hoping for. I got a few messages saying "Dude, no way you did that! That was an epic ending! I can't wait for the next book!". Hearing that is such a good feeling, knowing that my work is paying off and giving even just a few people some satisfying entertainment.

So yeah, that about does it. I'm quite happy with where my writing is and working hard to get the next installment of The Sixth Order done. That's all I have to report. Update over. See you, who-knows-when. Bye.