The Final Calling: Progress Report Zero update

Regarding the various projects described a couple of weeks back in Progress Report Zero, here’s how they stand:

  • One-Eyed Jack is complete and has been delivered to my agent.
  • Realms of Light is complete and has been delivered to FoxAcre Press.
  • Vika’s Avenger has been shelved for the moment. No one seemed all that enthusiastic about it.
  • After some preliminary discussion, the gaming company has been quiet for a couple of weeks, so I’m not sure where we stand with that. Unless negotiations pick up again, I won’t let this get in the way of The Final Calling.
  • I’m about 20-25% of the way through the first draft of Tom Derringer and the Aluminum Airship, and intend to write the rest.
  • “The Warlock’s Refuge,” which will be Chapter One of The Final Calling, has been posted to the web. Unless something else comes up, I intend to start writing the novel as soon as I finish Tom Derringer and the Aluminum Airship, and I’ll start the serial once I have at least four, maybe five chapters written.

So there you go. The Final Calling is second in the queue at present.

Realms of Light: Progress Report Twenty-Nine

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.

The Final Calling: Progress Report Zero

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.

Realms of Light: Progress Report Twenty-Eight

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.

Realms of Light: Progress Report Twenty-Seven

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!

Realms of Light: Progress Report Twenty-Six

Okay, the first draft is written, though I’m going to go back and revise a little before I let anyone else see it.

It runs twenty chapters — well, nineteen and a half, really, because Chapter Twenty is just a couple of pages long. It’s 60,300 words. That means the final draft will probably be pretty close to the same length as the original Nightside City.

I’ll be sending donors who asked to receive the chapters as they’re written a single file of Chapters Sixteen through Twenty some time this week. I’ll also be sending them a small file of the notes I’ve written to myself about what needs to get done in rewrite, as a sort of extra glimpse into the project.

There are two obvious questions about where we go from here: What’s going to happen with the web serial? What’s the schedule for the finished book?

The web serial will continue as money continues to trickle in; I have some hope that it will be completed eventually. I’m about halfway to posting Chapter Thirteen. Chapter Twenty will be a freebie, included with Chapter Nineteen; it’s too short to require full price. That means my total take for the serial will be about $4,500 gross; since I need to pay for copies for donors out of that, the net will be much less. This is why serials are a relatively low priority for me; it’s just not a cost-effective use of my writing time.

If the serial is never completed, well, that’s just too bad.

As for turning the first draft into a finished book, it’s going to be a spare-time project for me, but I will get a final draft done some time in 2010. FoxAcre Press intends to publish it, though we don’t actually have a signed contract yet — we have a fairly detailed verbal agreement. I can’t speak for FoxAcre as to when the finished book will be available, but I can and do promise that it will be printed and mailed to donors before it’s offered to the general public, and that if I do put together an accompanying pamphlet about designing the Eta Cassiopeia system, it will only be available to donors to the serial.

It’s been suggested that FoxAcre might do a combined edition of Nightside City and Realms of Light in a single volume; the publisher has turned that idea down. However, donors who don’t already have a copy of Nightside City and want one should contact me by e-mail; we can arrange something, though it won’t be an omnibus volume.

Now, regarding future serials: I’ll start a new Ethshar story sometime in 2010. I don’t know when. It will probably be The Final Calling, but that’s not 100% certain — if I develop a sudden wild enthusiasm for The Sorcerer’s Widow or Azraya of Ethshar or A Feather from Her Wing or At the Sign of the Crimson Wolf, I’ll do that instead. (I don’t think there are any contenders other than those five.)

If it is The Final Calling, it will start with a short story, “The Warlock’s Refuge,” which will be posted as a teaser instead of Chapter One — the story will eventually be either a prologue or Chapter One, but it will also a complete story in its own right. No, I haven’t written it yet; it’s just an outline so far.

There may be other, non-Ethshar serials as well, depending how my career is going elsewhere and how productive my writing time is, but I’m not going to try doing any more sequels to twenty-year-old novels. This means The Exile and the Empire is not going to happen. Probably just as well, as the outline’s awfully skimpy and I’ve forgotten a lot of stuff I never bothered to write down. Silver Stars is right out, too.

I don’t expect to do much of anything on any serials for the last two months of 2009; I need to focus on more lucrative work for awhile, and of course the holidays are a big distraction.

So — there you go. Comments and questions are very welcome.

Realms of Light: Progress Report Twenty-Five

Still a long way to go before I have enough money to post Chapter Thirteen, but there’s been some progress.

On the writing end, I’m midway through Chapter Eighteen. I’m estimating the first draft will run twenty chapters, 60,000 words, which means the final draft won’t be as short as I’d feared; it might be as long as the original Nightside City, which ran 68,000 words.

A lot of the wordage I’ll be adding in the second draft (and subsequent drafts) will be atmospherics — details of the setting that I didn’t bother with the first time through, because the first time through writing anything I focus on plot and character. I’m getting to the point in the story where I’m starting to make mental notes about what I need to add or change when I get into rewriting it. Usually, some of these mental notes then get typed up as reminders to myself that I refer to as I work. This time, I’m thinking I’ll make those notes available to donors in a password-protected webpage, so that if they’re interested they can get a look at my process. Not sure when I’ll get that up; when I do I’ll e-mail the donors with the URL and password.

So far, the most urgent note to myself amounts to a reminder to include details of the climate and weather on Prometheus.

With the Ethshar serials, donors who got the finished book also had the option of getting a chapbook of a short story as a bonus. I haven’t written any short stories about Carlisle Hsing, or set in Nightside City, so I can’t do that this time, but I am planning to put together something about how Dr. Sheridan Simon and I (mostly Dr. Simon) designed the Eta Cassiopeia system. I hope that will do.

I’m into the stage of the writing that I think of as the endgame, where everything feels inevitable and is rushing toward its conclusion. That’s good, in that it means the first draft will get finished and probably get finished soon, but it also means I don’t want to be distracted by stuff like mailing out Chapters Sixteen and Seventeen, or putting up webpages, or having a life. It also means these last few chapters are a bit sketchier than the earlier chapters, because I’m writing them in a hurry, which I’ll mostly fix in subsequent drafts, but which is another reason I’m not in a big rush to mail them out.

I’ll get to all that other stuff eventually, I promise.