One Book Two Book, Long Book New Book
So I have been working on this doorstop of a novel for...well, I started it in 2006. It gets abandoned, rediscovered, re-poked, re-jiggered every so often. In the last couple years, it's finally turning into a coherent readable mass of words and now I'm just cruising through trying to finish the damn thing. (For those following along at home, it's the one with the possessed paladin and the ninja accountant.)
The problem was that it was 130K and I still had a good chunk left to go.
Now, I write fairly short books, as you guys know. 65K is about my perfect length. This thing was monstrous. I plan to self-pub the ebook but the idea of a print version was...well, you guys remember how I threw my back out lugging copies of Digger?
My buddy Mur, queen of podcasting, listened to my woes at coffee and said "Make it two books."
I gaped at her. "I can DO that?"
"Do we have to have the economics talk? Have you on Ditch Diggers (that's her podcast, go listen to it) so we can yell at you?"
This blew my mind.
It also solved a lot of problems for an author who prefers to keep their ebooks cheap and their books not requiring death cement to keep the bindings together.
So! Clockwork Boys, Book One of the Clocktaur War, has been sent to my editor and will be out hopefully this year. (Patrons, you get the ebook for free, of course!)
None of this is the point. The point is that, having split it into two books, suddenly I am working on Book Two (tentatively titled The Wonder Engine) and I am having to do all the stuff that you do at the beginning of a second book, where you re-describe all the characters and do very brief info dumps about how your heroine got that tattoo and why she's still pissed at the paladin after rescuing his armored ass from a bunch of murderous deer people. And re-foreshadow stuff and re-establish that your thief sneezes constantly and the assassin smokes cigarettes and the paladin takes hot baths at every opportunity and all the stuff that you do when you're writing a second book.
Which honestly, is sort of useful for the writer as well as the reader, gives me a chance to re-center myself in the story, but it adds even more words.
The second book is already longer than the first one, and there's still so much more to get through. How do epic fantasy people DO this!?
Anyway. Clockwork Boys, hopefully this year, Wonder Engine hopefully early next year. My brain hurts.
The problem was that it was 130K and I still had a good chunk left to go.
Now, I write fairly short books, as you guys know. 65K is about my perfect length. This thing was monstrous. I plan to self-pub the ebook but the idea of a print version was...well, you guys remember how I threw my back out lugging copies of Digger?
My buddy Mur, queen of podcasting, listened to my woes at coffee and said "Make it two books."
I gaped at her. "I can DO that?"
"Do we have to have the economics talk? Have you on Ditch Diggers (that's her podcast, go listen to it) so we can yell at you?"
This blew my mind.
It also solved a lot of problems for an author who prefers to keep their ebooks cheap and their books not requiring death cement to keep the bindings together.
So! Clockwork Boys, Book One of the Clocktaur War, has been sent to my editor and will be out hopefully this year. (Patrons, you get the ebook for free, of course!)
None of this is the point. The point is that, having split it into two books, suddenly I am working on Book Two (tentatively titled The Wonder Engine) and I am having to do all the stuff that you do at the beginning of a second book, where you re-describe all the characters and do very brief info dumps about how your heroine got that tattoo and why she's still pissed at the paladin after rescuing his armored ass from a bunch of murderous deer people. And re-foreshadow stuff and re-establish that your thief sneezes constantly and the assassin smokes cigarettes and the paladin takes hot baths at every opportunity and all the stuff that you do when you're writing a second book.
Which honestly, is sort of useful for the writer as well as the reader, gives me a chance to re-center myself in the story, but it adds even more words.
The second book is already longer than the first one, and there's still so much more to get through. How do epic fantasy people DO this!?
Anyway. Clockwork Boys, hopefully this year, Wonder Engine hopefully early next year. My brain hurts.