The War of Memory Project

I can’t really call them Book 5 updates anymore, when nothing about Book 5 is moving.  Sadface.  Hopefully soon, though.

September has been trash for progress, due to a few Day Job issues but also a grand fun time with a pool leak.  A leak repair guy is out there right now, getting started on what should be a 2-3 day affair, which pretty much smashes my writing week.  I know, fragile artist types, but I can’t concentrate when there are other people around.  I feel like it’s been that way for the whole month.

Regardless, I’m wrapping up chapter 16 of the Book 6 rough draft now (well, probably Thursday v_v).  Hopefully October will be more productive, but there will be at least one Day Job intrusion.  Not sure now whether I can finish the draft in this calendar year, but since all my deadlines are self-imposed, I suppose it’s fine.  My alpha reader seems to be enjoying the draft well enough, though I have a lot of work to do, both in removing and adding material.  Honestly, right now I’m just going through my copious notes and trying to hit all the points brought up by them.  Turning all of that into a polished story with the right character and plot beats is the big job.

So.  Book 5’s main draft is done.

Looking at my timeline for this book is pretty embarrassing.  According to my notes, I started the rough draft on 11/1/16, finished it on 3/7/18, then immediately started this draft.  Which I have just now finished, nine months later.

So much for speeding up my production cycle!

Some data:

The rough draft clocked in at 439 pages (in my preferred page/font size), which came out to 317k words.  Whereas the main draft, this one, ended up as….338 pages and 246k words.  I fricking gutted this book.

More comparisons:

Book 1’s final final version is 186k words.  B2 is 238k words.  B3 is 336k words, and B4 is 288k.  So if this one stays around this size, I am indeed making a bell-curve of book sizes, which is something I weirdly kind of want?  Remains to be seen if B6 will follow that trend or expand into something very different.

I now have to wait for my beta readers to go over the last bit of b5 I’m shipping them, then go through the final draft (possibly chapter by chapter on googledocs with my alpha) and deal with all the new notes this draft generated, then format everything.  Also, of course, I need a cover.  Cover Artist has been having a rough time recently, so Book 5 might not roll out til mid-late spring at this rate…  But that’s just how it is.  I’m on no timeline but my own — though I do hate to keep people waiting.

Anyway, thanks for your patience.  I’ll try to post more while I have some brain-space available (aka while the betas are doing their thing), but it being holiday time, who knows if I’ll succeed?

Regardless, more…soonish.