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.