Okay, here’s the situation:<\/p>\n
I’m almost done writing a novel called One-Eyed Jack<\/i>; 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.<\/p>\n
The five projects are:<\/p>\n
The Final Calling<\/i> was fifth and last on that list, despite fannish clamor for it, for two reasons.<\/p>\n
First, these serials don’t pay all that well, and the poor performance of Realms of Light<\/i> has not encouraged me to try again.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
So Reason #2 for not writing it has largely evaporated.<\/p>\n
But there’s still Reason #1.<\/p>\n
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>. I’m not sure yet which one, or how long it’ll take, or whether The Final Calling<\/i> will be next after that.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Working on two things at once is possible, but not necessarily easy.<\/p>\n
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<\/i> want to do.<\/p>\n
Thanks for your patience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-progress-reports","category-realms-of-light","category-the-final-calling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethshar.com\/serials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethshar.com\/serials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethshar.com\/serials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethshar.com\/serials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethshar.com\/serials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethshar.com\/serials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":429,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethshar.com\/serials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions\/429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethshar.com\/serials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethshar.com\/serials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethshar.com\/serials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}