I’ve had a fairly productive week of writing on my Work In Progress – The Rising. I’m currently sitting at around 62K words and I’ve just crossed over into the fourth act. So things are moving right along. I had a bit of a revelation yesterday about the parts that I have jettisoned for this novel. A few months back I realized that the Votainion based subplot in the book was not working. It was about characters who in the end, never actually engaged with the hero of the story. It was like I was telling two different stories that never connected. I didn’t throw all those chapters out, I simply copied them into the third book. But the events I was writing about needed to happen before Book 3 of the series. They actually did happen at the same time as the events in Book 2, The Rising.
My solution is to create a novella and set it in the Starforgers time frame between Book 1 and Book 3. That novella will be all about Empress Nykostra, ruler of the Votainion Empire. It will be called The Blood Empress and I’ll write it after I complete The Rising. I have already written about 3K words and most of the story is already outlined, so hopefully it will write faster than a regular novel.
My goal now is to try and get The Rising out as an ebook before Christmas, but a more likely date will be January of next year. The novella will be pushed out within a few months after that. Then I’ll dive into Book 3, Counterstrike and hopefully get that one out by next Christmas. That’s more writing than I think I’ve ever done over a two year period. It will be cool to try and get it done. After I publish Book 3, I’ll give the Star Saga a break and go write a Mystery novel.
Hopefully I’ll get back to the saga with Book 5, XiniX, sometime around 2016.