Tom Frost: Blog

Yesterday, too sleep-deprived to write or edit, I decided to pull together the stats on *Too Much Love* to see how long it actually is. I'd been working with the premise that a page was about 2K and the average word ~5 characters and got an inflated number from SOL's size estimate. As it turns out, the story will pass the 1,000 page mark when I post chapter 39 (hopefully this Friday.)

The current stats are: 404,367 words over 992 pages.

If, as I suspect, I'm about halfway through the book, it should come in around 2,000 pages. If, as I fear, I'm only a third of the way through... well, the math is pretty straightforward.

I'm actually writing in chapter 41 right now and hope to edit 39 tomorrow. Now that I've gotten Nick & Co to Milan, the writing is much easier.

The first 40 chapters have covered late June to early August, 2015. Because so much is changing in Nick & Co's lives during this period, pretty much every day has at least one scene during that span. Starting with Milan, the pace is supposed to pick up a lot. The remainder of the book should cover through July 4, 2017.

Because I can't help but do the math, I should note that, if the pace doesn't pick up, it'll take 21,824 pages and about 8.9 million words to get to that date.

I normally don't worry too much about SOL scores on my stories. They tend to reward stories with an early payoff much more highly than those that take a while to develop. Elevated benefited from this. The Billionaire Life has suffered. If it worried me, I would write more to the metric.

I am pleased to see, however, that TML's score has risen over time. Early on, it was around 6.70. At last check, it was 7.60.

What's really nice about this is that, 37 chapters and 1,100 pages or so in, it's finally peaked into the Top 50 Ongoing Serials list in the top 48. Hopefully, a few more people will discover Nick and his friends and enjoy.

I just wrapped up the first draft of chapter 37 in all of its magnificent, messy glory. The beast is 65 pages long.

There are two parts to the chapter. Part 2 is the engagement party. Part 1 is "things that have to happen before the engagement party and subsequent trip to Milan." If I weren't releasing *Too Much Love* one chapter at a time, I would definitely rewrite previous chapters to include the first part before now. It's too small and inconclusive to be its own chapter where it is.

Since I'm posting as I write, you'll be getting it all as a single chapter, hopefully next Friday (May 4.) I just have to beat it into postable shape.

At this point, the draft of chapter 37 is 41 pages long. There are probably another 20 pages to go. I would break it in half and post the first half, but there's no great stopping point.

I'm writing most days, but currently looking for my next job, so it can be a bit slow going.

I'm hoping to have chapter 37 of Too Much Love out by Friday, March 30. It's been slow-going for a number of reasons, the most germane to readers being that I had a much clearer picture in my head of what happened in chapter 38 than this one.

Chapter 37 will be Lev and Arwen's engagement party and all the characters putting things in place in anticipation of their trip to Milan.