Work in Progress: Earthright

Last time looked at: 2/26/17

Last actual wordage added: 7/30/14 (not counting minor revisions)

Pages added, 2/26/17: 0 (but see below)

Current page count: 53

Estimated final page count: 300-350.

Deadline: None. Purely speculative.

Comments: I got chatting with an editor on Facebook on Thursday night, and he said he’d love to see an SF novel proposal from me, so I suggested Earthright as a possibility, and he thought it sounded interesting.

So I pulled it out of mothballs, and over the weekend I wrote a ten-page outline of the whole thing, completing it about 3:00 Monday afternoon. The outline includes details I hadn’t worked out before that will require a few minor tweaks to the four and a half chapters I’ve written, but that’s not a big deal.

I never had a working outline before, not really; I had the story in my head, but not on paper or disk anywhere, not as Earthright. It was cobbled together from two other stories, “Legend” and Labyrinth. “Legend” was a complete story for Marvel’s Open Space #6 that was never used because the series got cancelled after #4. Labyrinth was intended to be an Amelia Hand novel, but all I ever wrote of it was a four-page opening scene that got incorporated into Chapter Three of Earthright. I knew the premise, but never wrote it down.

Oh, and the title concept of Earthright was originally a separate idea.

Anyway, I wound up merging the three into Amelia Hand’s origin story. I initially tried to use the comic book script as an outline but diverged from it so quickly it became useless even before I got to the Labyrinth part, and other than that, until now I never had an actual written outline.

Now to clean it up and send it to my agent.

13,207 words. (The difference from the last word-count I reported, back in 2014, is almost entirely because this is a WordPerfect word-count and the previous one was Neo Office — WordPerfect always runs lower.)

Work in Progress: Stone Unturned

Progress report:

Last time looked at: 2/20/17

Last actual wordage added: 2/20/17

Pages added, 2/19-20/17: 12

Current page count: 511

Estimated final page count: 520-550?

Deadline: None, but Wildside says they’ll send me a contract any day now.

Comments: Well, that was interesting.

I woke up Monday morning with the clear realization that I hadn’t ended the novel correctly, and that there needed to be another chapter from Morvash’s point of view at the end. At least one.

So I wrote Chapter Forty-Five, eleven pages long, tying up a bunch of loose ends and giving Morvash some closure. I also added half a page to the epilogue, tying up even more loose ends, and a few bits elsewhere.

I now realize I may need to add other stuff, possibly including more chapters from Darissa’s or Hakin’s POV. (I think I have Morvash covered.) These wouldn’t go at the end; they would be inserted at appropriate points.

I fiddled with the chronology more, and am happy with how I have it now. Finally.

I’m still not quite up to The Unwelcome Warlock‘s 127K word-count, but it’s getting close.

Word-count is now 125,273

Work in Progress: Stone Unturned

Progress report:

Last time looked at: 2/18/17

Last actual wordage added: 2/18/17

Pages added, 2/18/17: 0.

Current page count: 499

Estimated final page count: 500-540?

Deadline: None, but Wildside says they’ll send me a contract any day now.

Comments: Okay, I’ve cleaned up all the formatting and fixed the dates (for now), as well as doing a very quick revising pass through the second half of the novel. There are now 44 chapters, plus prologue and epilogue. The chapter interweaving gets pretty much random after about Chapter Twenty-Eight — the default is Morvash, but Hakin and Darissa get a couple of chapters thrown in almost at random.

I’m thinking of adjusting the chronology some more; I have fairly cold weather in what would be equivalent to late September, and I think I may want to shift that a few sixnights later.

The longest Ethshar story to date was The Unwelcome Warlock, which WordPerfect puts at 127K (other methods give it a higher word-count). This one’s closing on 122K, and still needs more filling in, so it may catch up or surpass Warlock. We’ll see.

Word-count is now 121,806

Sample: Stone Unturned

“Marek wants to know what could happen if the spell goes wrong.”

“Oh, just about anything. I could be turned to stone, or we could all become weightless and bump on the ceiling, or monsters could come out of the walls.”

For a moment no one spoke; then Ariella asked, “What’s the most likely way it could go wrong?”

Work in Progress: Stone Unturned

Progress report:

Last time looked at: 2/17/17

Last actual wordage added: 2/17/17

Pages added, 2/17/17: 0.

Current page count: 489

Estimated final page count: 490-525?

Deadline: None, but Wildside says they’ll send me a contract any day
now.

Comments: That got complicated.

I’ve rearranged all the chapters, but then there were formatting issues and WordPerfect crashed and… well, things got a bit damaged. No text was lost, but I’m still cleaning up dropped indents and so on.

You will recall that I wasn’t happy with how the different storylines matched up. I had them arranged like this (M=Morvash, D=Darissa, H=Hakin):

MDMDMDMDMDMDMDMHMHMHMHMHMHMHM… (That was as far as I’d gotten in the second draft.)

Well, now they’re MDMDMDMHDMHDMHDMHDMMHMMHMMHM… And everything lines up nicely. I think it actually has a better flow, too, starting Hakin’s story earlier.

I’m only up to Chapter Twenty-One with the formatting clean-up, and I still want to tweak the chronology a bit (two different sequences wound up in the month of Longdays, ten years apart, which I think is a potential source of confusion).

So there’s more I should do, but it’s past my bedtime.

Word-count is now 121,331

Work in Progress: Stone Unturned

Progress report:

Last time looked at: 2/16/17

Last actual wordage added: 2/16/17

Pages added, 2/16/17: That’s complicated. More than one, fewer than seven.

Current page count: 490

Estimated final page count: 490-525?

Deadline: None, but Wildside says they’ll send me a contract any day now.

Comments: Okay, I’ve gotten to the point in the second draft where the stories all merge, and I definitely need to rearrange some chapters. In fact, I’ve split one in half, and moved the first half back to earlier, so as to make the events line up properly.

That’s responsible for part of the increase in page count; I’m not sure how much.

I’m at the break between Chapter Twenty-Seven and Chapter Twenty-Eight (which used to be 26 and 27); everything is now on the correct side of this break, but some earlier chapters need to be rearranged.

I’ve been correcting a lot of chronology; I discovered I had misremembered the date of The Unwelcome Warlock.

A third draft will definitely be necessary, but for now I’m just trying to get through the second.

Word-count is now 121,279

Work in Progress: Stone Unturned

Progress report:

Last time looked at: 2/14/17

Last actual wordage added: 2/14/17

Pages added, 2/14/17: 2

Current page count: 483

Estimated final page count: 483-525?

Deadline: None, but Wildside says they’ll send me a contract any day now.

Comments: I’ve stopped at the start of Chapter Sixteen, where Hakin and Tarker first appear. Darissa and Marek are out of the story for the next several chapters now. Morvash, of course, is still very much present.

It seems to be going well.

Word-count is now 120,769

Work in Progress: Sharra the Petty (working title, subject to change)

Progress report:

Last time looked at: 2/14/17

Last actual wordage added: 2/14/17

Pages added, 2/14/17: 2

Current page count: 3

Estimated final page count: 300? I don’t really have any idea.

Deadline: None. Purely speculative.

Comments: I woke up with part of the plot for this in my head, which
I took as a sign I should actually start writing it. So I did.

For those who don’t remember every stupid little thing I say: This is
an Ethshar story about a minor character from Stone Unturned. I’m
guessing it’ll be a short novel, but it might not make it to novel
length at all.

Sharra is not happy with Dulzan’s actions.

Word count: 396

Work in Progress: Stone Unturned

Progress report:

Last time looked at: 2/12/17

Last actual wordage added: 2/12/17

Pages added, 2/12/17: 1

Current page count: 481

Estimated final page count: 482-525?

Deadline: None, but Wildside says they’ll send me a contract any day
now.

Comments: Seven chapters into the second draft, and still going smoothly. I don’t know why, but it took me forever to get started tonight; I just wasn’t in a writing mood, though once I did start it was fine.

I’m over 120,000 words!

Chapter Seven is short; if this were a serial I couldn’t count it. It’s only seven pages.

At this point, in the restructured format, I’m alternating viewpoints between Morvash and Darissa; Zerra hasn’t been seen since the prologue, and Hakin has yet to appear. Morvash’s chapters are forty-seven years later than Darissa’s; I hope readers will notice that, since the dates are in every chapter heading.

Word-count is now 120,148