Author Update on Books and Games
The Endless Deep and Defiance, specifically, although we'll talk about the Age of Shadows (Oathbound) series too.
Some notes on How Things Are Going, as well as What’s Going To Happen!
THE ENDLESS DEEP - THE CHRONICLES OF ALLUVION
The next episode of The Endless Deep (Episode VII) will be delayed slightly. My humble apologies to those who are waiting on it. It should come out on Wednesday. I could attempt to rush it, but that way lies madness, and I try my best to avoid madness.
I’ve also been carefully watching the progress of the book, and based on what I know about story structure, combined with what I know about myself as a writer… The Endless Deep is probably going to be rather longer than what I thought at the beginning. I am not going to say, definitively, how long it is going to be… but it could be over 200,000 words, perhaps even nearer to 300,000 words. Which means that my first hope of having the entire trilogy written and ready to go by the Lilac City Comic-Con is… haha, not going to happen.
See, I had originally thought that the entire trilogy would only take something like 350,000 to 400,000 words. The entire trilogy. But if we’re at the 70,000 word mark published right now, and my sense is that we’re still only one quarter of the way through Book One… then we’re looking at 280,000 words for Book One, if it maths out perfectly.
I could be mistaken, but I’m mentally preparing myself for the possibility that I have stumbled into a gigantically huge story.
If this trilogy is actually made up of monstrously sized books somewhere in the 200k to 300k word range, then the series may end up being over 600k words long. Maybe up toward 900k. For reference, The Lord of the Rings is over 480,000 words long. Almost 580,000 words if you include The Hobbit.
Half a million words is not a small thing, friend.
Now, I could be wrong. I kinda hope I am, although I know some readers will be delighted to have me deliver a book trilogy of that size. I had no intention of writing a trilogy that would be longer than The Lord of the Rings, but if that is the size of the story, then that is the size of the story.
SO HOW DOES THAT CHANGE THE PUBLISHING SCHEDULE?
Obviously, longer books take longer to write — ain’t no way around that. And if each book is a trilogy sized tome in and of itself, then it no longer makes sense to hold off on print publication until I have all 3 books written. I am not going to just sit on half a million words.
So I’ll be publishing the books as I finish them.
I may also do shorter books in between Alluvion books: the Age of Shadows series. Although Oathbound is a standalone novel, there are 3 other books in that setting begging me to write them, and when I have finished that arc, there will be 7 books in that series. The Age of Shadows books are sub 100,000 word books, which I can write and edit a lot faster.
Depending on how things go with The Chronicles of Alluvion, I may take a break in between books 1 and 2 and write the sequel to Oathbound, working title Wolfsbane.
WHAT ABOUT THE GAME?
Don’t you worry now, I’m still working on Defiance. In fact, the playtest version has been entered in a game design competition.
To produce a game well requires a good deal of fairly invisible work, and I’m in the thick of it. I’ve also been doing a bunch of things for the game, for which there are no good art renders or screenshots.
Research, mostly.
I’ve been researching how to run a successful crowdfunding campaign (Kickstarter) and gathering a lot of data on how that all works, manufacturing stuff, delivery, timelines, etc. etc. I like to do things well, and if I do a Kickstarter, then I want the Kickstarter to be a good one.
I intend to start up another round of playtesting soon, once I’ve got a few more of the visual assets created and added to the book. There are a couple of things I learned in the last round of playtesting that I want to be sure are sanded out before I start working with playtesters again.
Okay. That’s all the updates for right now. I’m going to send this out before it gets too late.
As always, I’ll keep you posted. :]
— Cael