Progress updates

Written and uploaded on 10-15-2022

Hey, I know I missed a post or two recently, and that’s pretty dumb since they were all prewritten, but I have been super busy. I started a new day job back in February and things are ramping up there, so I have been doing some OT as of late, and well, let me explain some IRL timeline stuff related to the books.

Due to world events my publisher was leaking personnel and capability like a sieve. Nothing happened for almost a year, the release of the second book was eight months behind schedule, the hard back and audio book versions of the first book never got edited, formatted or completed even though they all had solid starts. Things were only going more and more downhill, and eventually I convinced them to pull the plug. So earlier this year, April 2022 I got in writing all the rights to The Descendant returned to me.

After the rights were returned to me, I took the 4 part series of Vignettes that had been uploaded as free teasers on the publisher website, and added them into the main book. The four parts go split into six chapters and spread chronologically through the book, increasing total word count from 60,000 to 72,000. I edited some for smoothness, to make it all blend together better. Then I did some market research, compiles a list of agents and spent June and July of 2022 querying agents for representation. The goal was/is to find and agent and get in with a bigger more powerful publisher and launch a second edition of the first book, before moving on to print the rest of the series.

After spending some time doing that, I was convinced that no one would publish the book because it was previously published, it wasn’t new and shiny and no one would be interested in it since they weren’t getting the first look. So, I took the first three books, and smashed them together into one massive 210,000 word tome. I spend the latter half of August and all of September editing this big book, and kicking around new tittle ideas.

So that super book, that magnum opus was done, and I was ready to start querying again. But I spoke with a marketing specialist. (She was based out of Brisbane Australia of all places, and she quickly ghosted me.) That conversation was enough to convince men that as a new, unheard-of author no one would be willing to pick up and put in the time to read such a thick book as that. I recently read a 225,000 word book, and it was kind of a slog, I probably wouldn’t have finished if it was written by who it was written by.

So…. With that in mind my trilogy of big books has been broken apart, and is again, a series of nine normal sized books, of which I have completed another draft of the first book, and retitled and there will be new art, and after all these changes, I feel the new 73,300 word Altar of Scales is different enough from originally published 59,900 word book The Descendant that I can call it, and market it as a new manuscript without being disingenuous.

My plan going forward now that we are in October of 2022, is to use November, which as some of you may know is National write a novel month, to finally finish writing book five. My beta readers have been nagging and it’s closing in on two years with that book sitting half done. I had earlier stopped work because I know it/ the series wasn’t going to advance any time soon under the hesitation of my wavering publisher, and now I have been busy editing querying, editing more and preparing to relaunch the entire series. So, in November, I will finally finish writing that book, and then December I will build up a new list of agents to query and get back at it with my new and improved book called Altar of Scales. I hope to see all you friends, fans and family there when it comes out and we can get this series properly underway. Because the first four of the nine books are all already written and the first three have had multiple drafts done. I feel they are ready for final review before publication, so perhaps the first third of the series will come out, without further delay.

After all this… it has been a learning experience. I have several other unrelated book ideas I would like to write and publish, and absolute worst-case scenario is, I self-published the entire Descendant Saga, write those other books, and publish those the traditional way. My biggest regret so far, is that with larger more traditional publisher than this Indy press I was previously working with, I probably won’t be able to continue using my grandfathers glorious art. That part, that hurts me. But maybe I will, we will se what happens, either way, this is getting done, and it will come out bigger, better and stronger than before. I hope to see you there. Regular posts will resume next week.