The Sorcerer’s Widow: Progress Report Ten

I need to be traveling this weekend, and will be away from my computer. I don’t expect to have any net access at all until at least Sunday night.

Therefore, I’ve gone ahead and posted Chapter Ten early; it’s up now.

The first draft is complete, and the plan is to post Chapter Eleven on July 7th, Chapter Twelve on July 14th, and Chapters Thirteen and Fourteen on July 21st. Enough money’s come in to cover all that.

I don’t have a contract with Wildside yet, and I haven’t started the second draft yet, so I have no idea when the finished book will be published. The first draft is just barely short of official novel length, but I expect the final draft to be longer.

I’ll be accepting donations until the end of July. After that I’ll probably take down everything but the first two chapters, in favor of the eventual finished version.

Hope you enjoy the story.

The Sorcerer’s Widow: Progress Report Nine

Chapter Nine is now online.

The entire story, fourteen chapters in all, is now written and paid for — first draft, anyway. It’s a few hundred words short of novel length (i.e., 40,000 words), but I expect to add at least that much in the second draft, so it’s not a novel yet, but it almost certainly will be. I haven’t yet approached Wildside about a contract; June is one of their very busy months. They’ve expressed interest, though.

The last two chapters run nine pages each in the first-draft manuscript, and I require a ten-page minimum for a paid installment of the serial, so they’ll both be posted the same week, and should wrap up the serial on July 21st. It’ll all be done and out of the way before my birthday.

The ending is pretty low-key, but I like it, and I hope you will, too.

I’ll be accepting donations until the end of July. Some time in August I may take down chapters Three through Fourteen; depends what happens with Wildside.

I posted this chapter about twelve hours late; sorry about that. There were some distractions last night, and I simply forgot. I woke up today to the horrible realization that I hadn’t posted it.

Last night’s excitement, which contributed to forgetting to post, included a neighborhood party for the folks next door, who are moving to Houston. A thunderstorm hit during the party, and we came home to find a twenty-foot tulip poplar limb had fallen in our back yard, breaking several branches off the dogwood that we planted in April. Damn it, I liked that dogwood! As soon as I’m done online I’ll be out there with a saw, cutting up the fallen limb.

In other writing news, now that I’ve finished the first draft of The Sorcerer’s Widow I’m taking a short break from Ethshar before revising it, and have been dabbling in other projects. I’m making progress on getting the text of The Chromosomal Code ready for reprinting, and last night I plunged into a short story I thought up back in May, called “The Sacrifice.” I wrote about 90% of it last night, but it was late and I was tired, so I left the ending for another day.

Guess that’s everything for now, but after last night I may well be forgetting something.

The Sorcerer’s Widow: Progress Report Eight

Chapter Eight is now online; hope you like it.

The serial is paid for through Chapter Thirteen.

I have just started writing Chapter Thirteen. What’s more, it may be the last chapter. Or next-to-last; I’m not sure yet. I’m definitely nearing the end, though.

My best guess is that the first draft will be a long novella, and the final draft will be a short novel. (The dividing line is 40,000 words.)

Can’t think of anything else that needs to be said.

The Sorcerer’s Widow: Progress Report Six

Chapter Six is now online.

Chapters Seven through Twelve are paid for.

Chapters Seven, Eight, and Nine are written.

It’s going reasonably well, but as I said in the preceding note, this first draft is rougher than my previous serials. I suspect it’s because I’m working from a very sketchy outline.

I’m estimating it’ll run twelve to fifteen chapters in all, but I could be way off. If I tried I could probably wrap it up in Chapter Ten, or if the plot gets away from me it could run eighteen or twenty.

Enjoy!

The Sorcerer’s Widow: A Note (Progress Report 5.5)

I want to mention that this first draft is rougher than my usual, probably because my outline was sketchier than usual. There may well be internal contradictions; I hope I’ll catch them all and fix them in the second draft. Feel free to point them out in comments in this blog. The general rule is that later chapters are more reliable than early ones, so if, say, Chapter Ten contradicts Chapter Six, Chapter Ten is probably correct, or at least closer to what will be in the final draft.

Chapter Six will be posted Friday night/Saturday morning. Chapter Nine is written. Chapter Twelve is paid for.