Grey Wolf: Blog

Hi everyone!

I have a (fortunately rare!) content-affecting repost of Chapter 49 queued. In one of those really dumb moments, I completely forgot 'Dad's' (aka Sam's) birthday, which was at the end of the chapter. The added text is short, and to save readers the need to chase it down, I'm posting it to the comments for Book 4 (posting it here puts it out there for readers of previous books, and while there is at most only a tiny spoiler, I'd still rather limit it).

Variation on a Theme (as a collective work) is now over the three million download mark! Since everyone likes big round numbers, that's worth a bit of celebrating.

Of course, it's mostly over that number because I write lots of medium-sized chapters, but it still works.

Speaking of writing lots of medium-sized chapters, writing has been going well over the last week or so. The plan remains (and will remain) that, if I go below a twenty chapter gap between publishing and writing, I will drop to two postings a week. However, I'm several chapters further away from the edge than I was when I announced that.

A couple of bad writing weeks could shift the balance back the other way, but right now things are in a good place.

Just in case the previous blog was confusing (because clearly it was, based on feedback), the issue isn't that Northwestern is inconsistent with our universe, the issue is that it's inconsistent with how it's written in the story. The schedule laid out in Chapter 2 isn't followed in the rest of the story. Mock rounds, their tournament, and the last week are a week sooner than described.

It's that internal inconsistency that I want to fix, and the fix will be to update Chapter 2 and other 'seven week' references, not to add a week in August. Everyone has things to do in Houston over that week :)

There's an error (which some readers have already noticed) concerning the length of the Northwestern summer program. There are plenty of references to it being a seven-week program, but it's not, it's six weeks. In particular, the session introduction is wrong, but any reference to seven weeks is also wrong.

Totally my fault (obviously). I had it planned to be seven weeks and wrote a considerable amount of it that way, then managed to find out the historic dates and determined that it was six weeks. Changes ensued, but not all of the references were fixed, including some really important ones.

On a semi-related note (not really, because I had time to write Northwestern properly and just dropped the ball), I've blogged before about my 'buffer' between posting and writing shrinking. From mid-September to late October I've had a lot going on that's keeping me from writing at the pace I'd like. Nothing bad, but two trips (a short one related to volunteering and a two-week work trip) and an extensive and sleep-depriving volunteer commitment in October are to blame.

In theory, November and December should be better, but I have two more weekend trips planned and the holidays can always interrupt things (though I have no big holiday plans at all).

All this is to say that I've decided that if my 'buffer' drops to 20 chapters, I'm going to drop to posting two times a week until it gets back to the 30+ chapter level where I would like it to be. I rely on having that buffer too much, probably, but the story would really suffer if I didn't have space to backfill corrections, dropped plotlines, and so forth.

Given that, I'd welcome comments as to your preferred posting dates for 2x/week. Tentatively I'm thinking Tuesday/Friday, but could be convinced of nearly anything that people prefer.

As always, thanks for reading!

Hello everyone!

First off, let me say again that I'm sorry about the double mixup on Friday. Wrong chapter, wrong setting! Hopefully, that will not happen again.

Second, the Chapter 16 that posts tomorrow will not be the same as the previous Chapter 16. There are no major differences, but quite a few technical errors have been fixed and a few conversations just slightly tweaked. You may or may not notice the differences in a reread.

Several people asked about a bonus chapter, particularly because Chapter 16 won't be new to some people on Monday. Unfortunately (though also fortunately) I had quite a lot of travel in mid September and late September to early October (over two and a half weeks away). I was unable to write at the pace that I usually write while traveling (I tend to always think I'll write on planes and in hotel rooms and so forth, but it seldom works out).

On top of that, October is my little-sleep month due to a heavy volunteer schedule. That's further slowed writing down.

All of this is to say that the 'buffer' between the chapter that's posting and the one I'm writing is at its lowest level in the last year and a half. I really need that buffer, as I often realize that some topic got short shrift a number of chapters ago and want to go fix it.

Until my buffer is back to where I'd like it, I wouldn't feel right about putting out a bonus chapter. It would be a risk to the quality of subsequent chapters and/or to my posting schedule.

Bigger-picture comment: As I said in the comments, VoaT will never simply end as an unannounced 'The End' chapter. There'll be a blog and so forth.

If something were to happen to me unexpectedly, there would just be an abrupt end to posting, and then I would hope that my editors would post all of the chapters they had in hand. I've considered the possibility of writing (and maintaining) a 'wrap-up' as a just-in-case-of-disaster ending, and I may do that. But, if I was able to post at all, it wouldn't just be ending out a 'The End' chapter with no explanation.

Thank you to all of you for reading!