Zanski: Blog

I have just submitted Book 1 of the Seneca Series: War Party. Provided I haven't fouled up the transfer -- which is far from guaranteed -- it should be posted tout de suite.

Book 2, Bootleg Justice, is about ready to go, and Book 3, Nuevo Mexico, is a few days from final polish, so, lord willing and the creeks don't rise, here we go again.

I have, within the hour, finished the third book of my Seneca series.

Now each book needs a final run through, each story usually requiring a week to ten days. During the course of that review I insert typos, scramble a few sentences, and add a few other errors simply for the reader to find and report to me, allowing him to feel smug and superior, while I pretend to have missed them, despite having gone over everything at least a dozen times. But it's all in good fun.

Hopefully the first book, War Party, might be posted by the New Year -- but no promises.

At 194k words, I just began the last chapter of Nuevo Mexico.

For some reason, I've been struck with a self-destructive urge to predict when I might be finished. I'll just teeter along this slippery, narrow ledge and say, "By Christmas."

Be forewarned, I'll need a final polish on each book before I submit it to the powers that be. That usually takes a week or two per book. Then everyone can start finding all the errors I've missed.

Ah, well. Home stretch.

OK, I'm at 177k words in Nuevo Mexico and still piling them up. I realize now I might have been a wee bit unrealistic when I reckoned on a length of 120k words for this third book. Still, I am determined to bring the chickens home to roost within an actual trilogy, rather than the five-book "trilogy" that the Trail Series became.

Come to think of it, why the obsession with a trilogy?

Just past 150K words on Nuevo Mexico, book three of the Seneca Series. Maybe another 10K or 15K words before I can bring 'er in.

I reckon I finally have a handle on why these books seem to grow beyond my expectations. I think it's because I write purely for the pleasure of it, and I just hate letting go of story lines.

The only thing that allowed me to end the Arenoso Trails Series was that the story line was bumping up against the Twentieth Century and I wanted to write about the Wild West.

However, the Seneca Series still has plenty of Wild West left in it. We'll see. But I'll post these three books as soon as Nuevo Mexico is finished.