Grey Wolf: Blog

Chapter 52 ends on a cliffhanger; therefore, chapter 53 will go out at the same time.

Happy Valentine's Day (when I write this, not when the postings go out) and/or Happy Presidents Day (when the postings go out).

I inadvertantly posted Chapter 50 - Storm Warnings, as Chapter 49. Chapter 49 is actually entitled 'Curiosity'.

It made no sense to remove a chapter that already had 1000 downloads. Therefore, I've reposted 49 correctly and also posted 50 correctly

Consider it a gift for Chinese New Year. Or what happens when we lose power for 24 hours and I'm scrambling to post and didn't get much sleep.

Steve's adventures in competitive Debate get going in earnest in chapter 47. The acronyms and other terms have been previously mentioned, but you shouldn't need to search for them. I've posted a side 'story' called 'Debate 101' that contains pretty much everything you need to know - and a bunch you don't - to understand the competitive Debate parts of the story. If you have questions or see omissions, please let me know. For every confused reader who reaches out, I imagine there are many more who aren't letting me know.

I've completed the repost of the first 31 chapters of the book plus chapter 35. At this time, everything past 35 is 'final'; however, there's always room for improvement and we're likely not done yet.

As noted before - there should be no need to go back and reread. Most of the changes are in writing style - I've reduced passive voice, clamped down on my tendency to overuse adverbs, and cleaned up a number of phrasings. There are a few minor new scenes, none of which change characters or plot in a way that should affect anything going forward, nor do I antipate any future changes of that sort. The story is the story; making the presentation of the story better is the goal.

If you do reread, let me know what you think. Also, whether you're a new reader or current reader, if you see typos, errors, anything like that, let me know and I'll get things fixed ASAP.

Many thanks to my editing and proofreading team. These updates are most notably the result of work by my editor Steve, who prompted many of the style improvements plus a number of improvements to characters, scenes, logical flow in a few places; too much to mention. Also, Gerrit caught a number of mistakes. The rest of the team are working on other sections yet to be published.

Thank you to everyone who's written to me and to everyone who's rated the story (even if it's not your cup of tea). I'm very happy that so many people are enjoying it and I hope that continues! In truth, we've only just begun the journey.

Hi everyone! I wanted to update everyone on some things going on with the story behind the scenes.

First: I'm very grateful for the support everyone's given to me and to this story. I appreciate it! I enjoy hearing from everyone - even if it's a critical comment. I might not change the thing you don't like, but that doesn't mean I'm not curious about what you're seeing and what you think I might do better. Whether it's feedback, comments, kind words, critical suggestions, jokes, nitpicking, or whatever else, please drop me a line.

We'll hit the halfway point of Book 1 (both by chapters and by timeline) this weekend. I'd planned to post several 'bonus' chapters in late December and January (effectively speeding up the posting process); that hasn't happened. I wanted to let you know why that hasn't happened - there's a good reason - and what to expect in the near future.

Early last month, a new volunteer editor (Steve - amusing coincidence in names) and I started working together. He's had many great suggestions. You'll notice changes based on his suggestions starting around Chapter 24-26. I've reduced the number of passive-voice constructions, cleaned up some wordiness, reduced the number of adverbs, and so forth.

I (with much help from my editing team) have now completed updating the 'early' chapters (1-34, to various extents) and will repost them, most likely on Thursday, February 4th. If you've read them, don't worry - there's nothing in there that you need to go back and read. There might be a bit more depth in a few places, and the writing's cleaned up. If and when you reread, you'll see that things look almost the same and yet slightly different. There's no strong reason to go back and read over 100,000 words, but I want it to be in place for new readers.

All this updating, and the need to proofread it all, has meant that I've been editing just a few chapters ahead of where I'm posting, which makes it hard to post bonus chapters. Now that I'm building a solid base of edited, cleaned-up, proofread, ready-to-go chapters, you'll likely see some bonus posts.

Looking forward, I've completed updating all of Book 1; my editors and proofreaders are at various points cleaning things up and making suggestions (one has moved on to Book 2). Book 1 currently runs 90 chapters and just short of 330,000 words; the reduction in sentence-by-sentence wordiness has balanced with new scenes giving more background or different perspectives on characters (most of the new scenes are in chapters that I've already posted or haven't posted yet; again, you won't miss much if you don't reread the old ones, and nothing that's critical for character development or plot). It's still possible that the number of words, or even chapters, will vary from those numbers as we complete editing the last 20% or so of the book.

Book 1 was 'done' and is 'done'; if I had to post what I have today, I'd have something I could be proud of. I'm proud of what's already posted, but I'm also enjoying working on making something good even better.

This is why I'm currently declining requests to make Book 1 available on e.g. Bookapy, or Patreon, or whatever. I'm exploring the idea of offering pre-release 'good enough' copies to readers who are willing to read something that's not fully done and expecting some things may change. I can see that becoming an option before long. I understand the desire to have the entire book in hand before starting into reading it; I tend to not read serials myself, mostly (except for long-running open-ended serials, where I read what's out there, wait a few years, then read again).

For those who encourage me to keep writing: Book 2 is currently about 90% or so 'done'. Some of what's written needs a fair bit of work, but it's mostly there. I've been spending so much time on Book 1 that it's stalled, but there are almost 350,000 words of Book 2 written (yes, it's longer than Book 1). About half is first-draft level, half is second or third. I expect to start posting Book 2 immediately upon the conclusion of Book 1 (and, fingers crossed, Book 3 should follow immediately on the heels of Book 2).

I hope you found this interesting. If you've got a question that might be a good blog topic, let me know. Of course, I'll do my best to answer non-blog topic questions, too.