My daughter is 26 years old now. Hard to believe I'm old enough to have a daughter who takes her dad out for a martini on Father's Day. But at least 20 years ago, I learned an important lesson. When driving my daughter and her friends around, don't try to participate in the conversation. Just shut up and listen. It's amazing what you learn.
Over the years, I discovered the same advice is valid for driving my story characters around. I drive and listen to the voices in my head.
After the great turnout and reception for my book releases last Sunday, I had to return to camp in Idaho. I sold 25 books that day, including all but one copy of Wild Woods. I need to restock. We further celebrated on Monday as Jason and I smoked a brisket for eleven hours and had a dozen friends over for dinner that evening. Great conversations, lots of questions, new ideas. I went to bed with my head buzzing.
What had me going was the condition of Book 4 in the Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins: Double Twist. I use continuous numbering through the series, so I'd been working on Part XV, Chapter 190. I was up to about 150,000 words and getting worried. I still had half a dozen chapters to write in this part and if I continued on with Part XVI, the book would turn out to be 220,000 words minimum. An unwieldly tome.
The four books are already 683,000 words. The Bible is only 783,000.
BUT… I wasn't sure I really had a story for the years after Jacob and crew graduate from high school. And then "a vision softly creeping, left its seeds while I was sleeping…" It still didn't answer the question of whether it was a final part of Book 4 or a whole Book 5. And that is where my head was when I hit the road Tuesday morning for the 350-mile, 8-hour drive back to camp. (Why so long? Traffic congestion just getting to the freeway. Well over an hour to go the first 20 miles! That and old man bladder. I'm good for thirty minutes or thirty miles, whichever comes first.)
So, a bit dazed and with a Carly Simon CD in the player, I started listening to the characters talking and basically ignoring me. And they outlined three more parts to the story that got me excited enough to stay up Tuesday night writing the next chapter of Double Twist so I'd be ready to start writing Double Team on July 1. Tomorrow!
Friday, I completed chapter 195, the end of Book 4. Tomorrow begins Camp NaNoWriMo and I've committed to continuing to provide my Sausage Grinder patrons ($10/mo) with a chapter per day of the story as I have since the first of April. And yes, if you join up, you get access to all the chapters written up until now. Or wait until August 20, 2020 for Book 5 to start on SOL.
When I told my editors that I'd just decided there would be one more book in the series, Pixel the Cat responded: "You are either having me on, indulging in some high-quality weed, or have totally lost it. There is absolutely no bleedin' way the post HS National Service time will fit in one book. More like three. But then, you probably expected the pre-NS HS story to be only 80 or so chapters."
He probably knows my writing style better than anyone other than Old Rotorhead who, upon receiving the last fourteen chapters of Book 4, said, "I was going to write to you today to say, "Gee, you've been quiet lately." So much for that!" Two weeks since he returned the last sixteen chapters and he's goading me to write a little faster!
So, here's the way it's shaping up at the moment:
Book 1: Double Take, Parts I-IV, chapters 1-48. Completed posting 5/26/2019.
Book 2: Double Time, Parts V-VIII, chapters 49-98. Started posting 6/1/2019 and scheduled to end 10/29/2019.
Book 3: Double Tears, Parts IX-XII, chapters 99-149. Scheduled to begin posting 11/5/2019 and end April 2, 2020.
Book 4: Double Twist, Parts XIII-XV, chapters 150-195. Scheduled to begin posting April 5, 2020 and end August 17, 2020.
Book 5: Double Team, Parts XVI-XVIII, chapters 196 and following. Scheduled to begin posting August 20, 2020, probably ending before the end of that year.
That will make two solid years of posting every three days. Woohoo!
In the meantime, just for fun, I'm writing Wayzgoose's Stocks & Blondes. I also plan to post his (my) seminal work, The Volunteer, in the next month or two as Wild Woods has only three more chapters to post.
And if that wasn't enough, my story consultant, Doug, has started to badger me about an interesting concept in a sci fi time travel story that has me intrigued. But he's banned me from starting it until I finish Double Team. Probably the story I'll be working on as I travel around the world this winter. More about that soon.
So, there you have the plans. Let's see if the universe decides to disrupt them!
Cheers!