I'm now on facebook. I relented and joined in the hope of meeting (more) girls in Malta, where I live at the moment. You can search by gwresearchb@aol.com to find me, those that requested a link.
Parts 1-4 have been edited, so if any of the usual suspects wish to find typos then please do. Thanks.
For those who have asked, I upgraded my ISP package and they "lost" my website. It is down at the moment but should be back soon. I am back to editing at the moment and should be writing again soon.
My latest book, Canuck, is now on the SOL. It's a spy story and in a different caste to K2, and very different to Magestic. It has also been edited closer.
I am now editing K2 and Magestic with a little help, and future readers of these works will not have to suffer typos at the hands of my fast fingers.
The writing of Magestic
I started Magestic to simply pass the time, and because I like writing and interacting with my fan base. But after I put the start of the story on various websites like SOL, the fan base grew, many hundreds of people commenting about the story and following it.
It then became a case of feeding the hungry hordes as they nagged for the story to be continued. Since the story covered human history from 1985 to 2035, it was always going to be a long story, and ended up the equivalent of twelve full novels – a lot of work. I got into the habit of pleasing the readers and churned out 40k words a week. I could have posted faster, but 3 days were spent editing and sending documents back and forth to helpers looking for typos.
I would never again attempt something this size, and do in some ways regret starting it. I would not say that it was a mistake, but other pressures in my life made it hard to keep up. Anything I write in the future will not be serialised, but take the form of complete independent novels of normal novel length, approx 65k words. The first of those, a spy book, has already been started.
At the beginning, Magestic was posted unedited on various sites, then edited, then finally edited by a group of people – and I went back over the later chapters many times. I will, when I have the time, go back through the whole thing and edit, improving it for later readers. But what you see is as it was written, very little altered other than typos. Most of the first 10 parts had next to nothing altered, which probably shows. Other works that I have written have been checked many times, and future works will checked carefully. As for the plot constructs, I had a rough idea of where I was going, but no intricate plan, nothing written down. As I writer, I don’t like to know where the story will end up, that would be boring to write. I start with a basic premise and flow from there. I will sometimes write a random move, just to see how I, the writer, can get the thread back, and how the characters react. There are more random turns in the work than you may think.
Very little research was done for Magestic, I simply used my knowledge, checking dates online. I did, on occasion, put countries in the wrong position, and forget the odd election – till people pointed it out.
Magestic 18, the conclusion, will be ready by June 12, and the new books will be posted on my website. Thank you for your interest, and now my fingers hurt.