The Serial Box

I told you it wasn’t dead — Chapter Fifteen of Realms of Light is finally online!

I maybe had to cheat a little — I’m actually still a couple of dollars short, but I decided it was close enough. Or if you count the advance from FoxAcre Press (which I don’t), then this chapter was paid for a couple of weeks ago.

The contracts with FoxAcre are signed, the token advance has been paid, cover art has been approved and the rights obtained. The editor has read the novel, and says there are a very few small changes wanted; I’m waiting for the file telling me what those are. None of them are potential deal-breakers, I’m assured, so everything’s on track. Due to unrelated family stuff taking up most of the publisher’s time right now, we don’t yet have a publication date, but it shouldn’t be too much longer.

Regarding the planned bonus chapbook, I lost the working file of Setting the Stage in a computer crash a few weeks ago, and will need to rewrite it from scratch; I do still have all the original materials, so it shouldn’t be difficult, but I haven’t yet found time to tackle it.

And I think that’s about everything; back to The Final Calling.

Alas, no new chapter yet, but I wanted to let readers know that the contracts with FoxAcre Press have been signed, and the token advance has been paid.

There’s no publication date yet, though; the publisher is in the midst of relocating because of his wife’s job, so everything’s at sixes and sevens. (I love strange old idioms like that.) It may, I regret to say, be awhile. Realms of Light is next in the editorial queue, but we don’t know when he’ll get to it. We do have cover art.

Further bad news: In a recent computer crash I lost the entire working file for the half-finished “Setting the Stage,” and no, I idiotically didn’t have back-ups. I’ll need to rewrite it from scratch. (I was able to recover the other two damaged files, but not that one.)

On the other hand, I wasn’t happy with how it was going, which was why it was only half-finished, and the delays at FoxAcre give me more time to get it right. I do still have the original letters.

As for the serial, I have $137 toward posting Chapter Fifteen, out of $250 needed. Inching forward very slowly…

In case anyone was wondering: Yes, the serialization of Realms of Light will continue even after the serial of The Final Calling starts; there’s no reason I can’t run both at once. It will continue after the finished book is published, too, unless the fine folks at FoxAcre object. I see no reason to stop. And contributing to the serial will remain the only way to get the chapbook of “Setting the Stage.”

(The serial of The Final Calling starts on Wednesday, by the way.)

Chapter Fourteen of Realms of Light has now been posted.

This is fourteenth out of twenty, but Chapter Twenty is so short that should the serialization get that far, it will be included free with Chapter Nineteen. That means a grand total of $1,248 more will get the entire first draft online.

Even though the novel has been revised, adding about 2,700 words in the process, and has been delivered to FoxAcre Press, this web serial will continue to be the first draft for as far as it goes.

Donors have the option of receiving the complete first draft in e-mail, in either RTF or PDF, but the final version will only be available through FoxAcre.

I’ve just sent the final (I think) version of Realms of Light to FoxAcre Press. I’m hoping it’ll see print, both on paper and as a Kindle edition, some time this summer.

I’m still $23 short of posting Chapter Fourteen of the first draft. There are twenty chapters in all.

At this point you may be thinking you’ll just wait and buy the finished book, which is perfectly reasonable — it’ll almost certainly cost less than $25. However, anyone in the U.S. who donates $25 or more to the serial will receive a copy of the finished book, and, if they want one, a copy of Nightside City — I have about a dozen copies of the Del Rey edition that will be sent out on a first-come, first-served basis to those donors who request them, and others will get the FoxAcre reprint, which includes an “Afterword” the Del Rey paperback lacks.

Also, donors will receive a copy of a chapbook, tentatively entitled Setting the Stage: The Eta Cassiopeia System, by Lawrence Watt-Evans & Sheridan Simon, describing the two stars and four rocky planets of the star system where the two novels are set. (The system might also have a few gas giants; we never bothered about them, as they don’t appear in the stories.) Some of this will be drawn from Dr. Simon’s original letters describing the planets I’d commissioned him to create; the rest I’ll write. It will include a lot of background information that never found its way into the novels, and will also explain references in the text that may have been somewhat mysterious.

This chapbook will only be available to donors and to Dr. Simon’s heirs; it will not be offered for sale, and if and when the serial is complete, that’s it, there won’t be any more copies printed or distributed.

Thanks for your support.

As of 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, April 17, 2010, I’m $23.00 short of posting Chapter Fourteen of Realms of Light.

Okay, here’s the situation:

I’m almost done writing a novel called One-Eyed Jack; it should be finished in a week or so. I have five other projects in the queue that I can tackle once it’s done, and I haven’t decided on what order I want to deal with them.

The five projects are:

• Finishing Realms of Light for FoxAcre Press; I have a complete first draft. The online serial has seven chapters to go, but I don’t want to wait forever before finishing the book.
• Finishing Vika’s Avenger. This is a novel I wrote on a whim a couple of years ago; I have a complete first draft, and would like to finish it up and see if I can find an interested publisher.
• I’ve been offered work writing tie-in novels for a game company, and the contract terms are pretty good. Some of their properties are really interesting, too. Pursuing this is very tempting; I told them I’d get back to them in May, one way or another.
• For years, my agent has been trying to talk me into writing a “young adult” novel. I think it’s a good idea, and I’ve started several, but none of them really caught fire. Recently, though, I plotted one with the working title Tom Derringer and the Aluminum Airship that my agent and I both like, so I was thinking I’d maybe do that next.
• And then there’s The Final Calling.

The Final Calling was fifth and last on that list, despite fannish clamor for it, for two reasons.

First, these serials don’t pay all that well, and the poor performance of Realms of Light has not encouraged me to try again.

Second, while I’ve known very roughly what was going to happen in the novel for years and years — I mean, we’re talking more than twenty years, almost thirty — I didn’t actually have a detailed outline. I knew I could work one out if I had to, but it wasn’t something I was really enthusiastic about. I’d written the first chapter, which is also a stand-alone short story called “The Warlock’s Refuge,” but I was kinda vague about exactly where the story went from there.

But then this past Friday, while driving to Richmond, a remark my wife made got me thinking about it, and I now have maybe 80% of the story outlined in my head, complete with a romantic subplot or two, an extensive cast of characters, and so on.

So Reason #2 for not writing it has largely evaporated.

But there’s still Reason #1.

So my current plan is to post “The Warlock’s Refuge” a week from Friday for International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, but I’m not officially starting the serial; I intend to undertake at least one of those four other projects before I write more of The Final Calling. I’m not sure yet which one, or how long it’ll take, or whether The Final Calling will be next after that.

Typically, turning a first draft into a finished book takes me a month or so; writing a YA or gaming novel is probably six months, give or take.

Working on two things at once is possible, but not necessarily easy.

So there’s the situation, and I’ll be happy to read any comments or advice you may have, but in the end I’ll be making the decision based on what I want to do.

Thanks for your patience.

I feel stupid.  I only today realized I never updated this.

Chapter Thirteen has been posted for more than a month.

I’m just about halfway to having enough to pay for Chapter Fourteen.

The entire first draft is written. Twenty chapters. I’ve sent copies to contributors who requested them, in either PDF or RTF format. (If you’re a donor who hasn’t gotten one and want one, e-mail me and tell me which format you want.)

FoxAcre Press will publish the paper edition as soon as I can find time to finish it; I don’t know when that will be, but if I had to guess, I’d say some time this summer. If money comes in to get the last seven chapters on the web, that’ll nudge me to get it done sooner.

The next serial, barring major changes in plan, will be The Final Calling an Ethshar novel; I’ll be posting the first chapter to the web as a stand-alone short story on April 23rd, if all goes well, but I’m not sure when I’ll be accepting donations and starting regular serialization.

Sorry about not keeping up with this better.

Still not quite enough to post Chapter Thirteen — I’m $33 short.  (I told a couple of people in e-mail it was less than that; I was wrong, having misremembered the previous total.)

The first draft hasn’t been touched in weeks; I’ve been busy with other concerns.  FoxAcre is patiently waiting for me to deliver a final draft, which I hope to do some time this year.

Due to the novel coming out shorter than anticipated, any donor of $25 or more who doesn’t already have a copy of Nightside City and wants one can have one thrown in at no additional charge when the book does finally see print; I have a few of both the original Del Rey edition, and the current FoxAcre edition.  When we’re within shouting distance of publication I’ll be asking folks which they want.  The Del Rey copies are first come, first served, as there are only a few and no way to get more.

Haven’t gotten any farther on the chapbook idea, but I did turn up a letter from Dr. Simon discussing what I was planning to do with Prometheus in Realms of Light.  There’s some interesting stuff there that I may copy and distribute.

Still hoping to complete the web serial.  Tell your friends to check it out and send me money.

Thanks for your support, and happy new year!

As suggested, here’s a place you can comment on Realms of Light and discuss it with other folks who have read it.

I’ll be including some corrections.

Spoilers are explicitly okay here, so if you haven’t read the novel you might not want to look at the comments on this post.