DAWNRISE

I don't know what you were up to last week, but I finished the final volume of a five-book dark epic fantasy series.

Perhaps I'll do a longer post about the process of writing book 5 at a later date, but for now let me just say that it was, in a word, tough. Dawnrise is right up there with Dark Immolation as far as the difficulty of the process goes, and perhaps even more difficult, although for different reasons.

However, it is now DONE. Or, at least, a revised-ish draft is done; as usual, I'll do another big revision and edits early next year. But the bones are there, and despite how much I hated myself as a writer and how much I hated this book as I was writing it, I (again, as usual) was pleasantly surprised by most of the book in the quick pass I did before sending it to my editor. That first-draft insecurity is pretty typical for most writers, it seems, including myself, but I was really feeling it with this book.

I am really glad it's done.

Also, I think you'll really like the ending.

Anyway, let's get some of the details out, as I do:

• Title: Dawnrise. This title has pretty much been written in stone since I titled the first novel of the series Duskfall. I'm a sucker for symmetry, so...yep :-).
• Version: 2.2.
• Total Word Count: 141,051. That's on the lower end of the other books in the series; the first-draft lengths of each of the previous novels were 162,000 (DF); 177,200 (DI); 131,600 (BR); and 187,000 (FtS).
• Chapters: 41, not including a prologue and an epilogue.
• Viewpoint Characters: Yeesh...let's see. All told, I'm looking at about 10 viewpoint characters. Some of them have smaller parts than others, but they're all pretty significant to the story.
• Start Date: January 2019
• End Date: 17 October 2019

And there you have it. If you're curious about some of the stats of the previous books in the series, here are some links:

DUSKFALL (also, incidentally, the first-ever post on this blog!)

DARK IMMOLATION

BLOOD REQUIEM

FEAR THE STARS

And, for now, I've got a few other projects calling my name that I've been really looking forward to tackling, so, if you'll excuse me...!

FEAR THE STARS

A screenshot, as void of spoilers as possible, of my Scrivener file for Fear the Stars. You will notice, however, the section titles and the interlude title, if that interests you. And, if you're in a really speculative mood, you can try to guess which colors represent which POV characters in my color-coded binder to the left ;-).

Yesterday I finished book Four of the Chaos Queen Quintet, Fear the Stars, and turned it in to my editor.

*Cue gargantuan sigh of relief*

My main goal was to finish this book before our second daughter was born. Well, she hasn't arrived yet, and is due in mid-October, so I'm on track there, at least! (Most of the above sigh of relief comes from the fact that I can now take some time off when the baby is born to spend time with new baby, little B, and Rachel with a clear conscience and nothing burning a hole in my plate, as it were.) That said, this book took longer than I'd anticipated, and I did have to extend my deadline by about a month (typically my Chaos Queen books are due in August the year prior to their release). Fortunately my publisher and editor were very understanding, and graciously gave me that leeway.*

This book was a blast to write, and for a few reasons. One, while many of the characters have been spread out geographically over the past few books, almost all of them converge into more or less the same space in Fear the Stars, and it's been a lot of fun to write those interactions. Also, I got to write two major sequences that I've been looking forward to writing since Duskfall--in the case of one of the sequences, since long before Duskfall. These two scenes, in part, inspired the Chaos Queen Quintet itself, and it was a really gratifying, cathartic experience to finally actually write them.

Also...this is a really good book, I think. Probably the best one yet. Which makes sense, because I hope I'm getting better with each book I write, but still. I think this will be a really good one.

I always like to provide a few details when finishing a book, partially for transparency's sake but mostly I just find the info and stats interesting. Admittedly I haven't been super consistent with which draft I've provided this information for--for Duskfall it was the very first finished draft of the book, for Dark Immolation it was a revised draft, for Blood Requiem the very first finished draft again, and now for Fear the Stars it's back to another revised draft. Part the reason behind this inconsistency lies in the fact that my first drafts are usually...very rough. I often skip a few scenes while writing that first draft, knowing I'll add them in with the first revision; the ending is sometimes barely more than a skeleton of what it will eventually become; characters are added and deleted; etc. So in most cases, I don't feel the very first draft I finish even represents a full book (although the first drafts of Duskfall and Blood Requiem, at least, were much closer than those of Dark Immolation and Fear the Stars!).

Anyway, all that is to say: on to the details for Fear the Stars!

• Title: Fear the Stars. I'll be honest, the titles of the middle three books of the Chaos Queen Quintet are perhaps just a little more abstract than I'd like my titles to be, mainly for accessibility (re: marketing). I mean, who am I kidding, Duskfall and Dawnrise, the titles of books 1 and 5 are a little abstract as well, but at least they have some symmetry. So I guess the abstruse titles are sort of a theme in and of themselves, now? Basically: in retrospect I don't think the Chaos Queen titles, especially the middle three titles, do a lot for the books from a marketing perspective. That said, I like them, and I suppose that counts for something, yeah?
• Version: 2.2 - I kind of covered this a few paragraphs ago, but this means it's a revised version of the book. 2.0 denotes a full revision, and any ticks in that first decimal place indicate minor changes made after or in supplement to that full revision. I will say, however, that I am very happy with this version of the book. I haven't been this pleased with a draft I've placed in my editor's hands since Duskfall; while I am very happy with the published versions of books two and three, the versions I first handed in to my editor still had some significant work to be done on them. I think this one will probably go through some changes as well, but it is very solid.
• Total Word Count:187,625. That's a lot, and technically the longest draft I've ever turned in to my editor (Duskfall was at 162,000, Dark Immolation at 177,200, and Blood Requiem at a measly 131,600. There's actually funny story about the lengths of the final versions of those books, but this post is already getting long so I'll save it for another time). But a lot is happening in this book, so I think it'll probably end up being the largest of the Quintet, unless something really surprises me in book 5.
• Chapters: 48, not including an Epilogue and an Interlude. (So 50 total, I guess.)
• Viewpoint Characters: Yikes...we're at 10, cont 'em, ten viewpoint characters now, not including 2-3 minor viewpoints that recur throughout the book. That's a lot, but then again I'm also on book 4 of a 5-book dark fantasy epic, so it makes sense.
• Start Date: Sometime in November or December of last year, I think? I really need to remember to mark the date I actually START novels.
• End Date: 2 October 2018. Fugging nailed it, ya'll.

So, Fear the Stars. It's gonna be big, ya'll.

* On a side note, I think in part I'm granted that leeway because, when I have gone over deadline, I've tried to anticipate it, alert my editor beforehand, and then give them a solid date for a new deadline and stick to it, which so far has never been more than 6-8 weeks out from the original deadline. The more professional thing, of course, would be to stick to the deadlines in the first place, and typically I try to do that, but on occasion life does get in the way, and I consider this way of going about extending a deadline much more professional than just watching the deadline pass me by, putting the onus on my editor to follow up and bug me about it, and then  either letting the same thing happen with the next deadline, or not giving them a projected new deadline at all.

BLOOD REQUIEM (CQIII)

As you can tell by the progress bar to the right, I've finished the first draft of Book Three of the Chaos Queen Quintet, Blood Requiem!

I'm quite happy about this--not only because finishing a draft of a novel is always a pretty awesome feeling, but also because this one realized itself much more smoothly than Dark Immolation. DI took me, all things considered, more than two years of writing time--about a year for that first draft, and more than a year for subsequent revisions. Two plus years was far more than I'd intended to spend on that draft, but, well, life happened, and turns out my first sequel was a pretty beastly undertaking.

That said, as difficult as DI was to write, it was a pretty phenomenal learning experience, and BR would not have  been nearly as smooth without that. That's life in a nutshell I guess, huh? Anyway, the process went so well that I've more than made up for how far DI put me behind schedule. A revised draft of the book is due to my editor in August, and two months is more than enough time to make that happen (and might just mean I'll have time to work on a different project or two before I start work on Book 4).

So, I usually do a little rundown of my process and the production itself when I finish a book (check out the one for Duskfall--the first thing I ever posted to this blog!--and the one for Dark Immolation), and of course I'll do the same with BR!

• Title: Blood Requiem. I'm quite happy with this title, actually, and for how it ties into the events and themes of the novel. Can't say much more than that at the moment, obviously, but suffice it to say I think it's a solid title!
• Version: 1.0, which means this is the first full complete draft. I'm trying something a little different with my process this time, which is to send version 1.0 to my agent and get some preliminary feedback (the first version of Duskfall my agent saw, for reference, was, like, 3.4 or something, and the first full version of DI he saw was 2.4). My preference is to do one pass on the novel myself before letting anyone read it, but that's what I tried to do with DI, and that's part of what got me into the hole I was in for so long with that book--I wanted to make it perfect, more or less, before anyone else read it, which was and is a complete impossibility, especially when only going at it with my own brain. Turns out, with the sort of release schedule I'm on for the Chaos Queen Quintet, I simply don't have time to do that. I'm okay with that now, however. While BR 1.0 is certainly rough around the edges, I think the story is pretty much all there, and I know a lot of what I need to do to trim, polish, and beef it up where necessary. Things are looking good, folks.
• Total Word Count: 127,091 words, as you can see in my Scrivener screenshot above. This is an interesting one. 127k is by far the shortest draft of a novel I've ever written. The first draft of DF was 184k, and the first draft of DI was a whopping 265k--twice the length of the BR first draft! I attribute this mostly to the fact that I did much more outlining for BR than I ever have in the past, and in doing so cut out a lot of the tangents I'd often pursue when left to my own novel-writing devices. In fact, I know of numerous things that I'm going to expand and others I'm going to add when I start the revision of BR. I'll usually expand a few things when revising a novel, but most of the time I cut far more than I insert, and I don't think that will be the case here. In fact, I'd estimate that when I turn in a revised draft to my editor in August, it'll be closer to 145k--roughly the same size as the final drafts of both DF and DI.
• Chapters: 48, not including a Prologue, an Interlude, and an Epilogue.
• Viewpoint Characters: 9 major points of view, with another four or five minor. Yikes. I'm going up by about two major viewpoints for each book--we'll see if that trend continues. (I sort of doubt it will, at least not at that pace, as 13 viewpoints for Book 5 just sound ridiculous...but we'll see!)
• Start Date: This one depends. I started pre-writing in November of 2016, but took December and January off to do the final revision of DI. I did some more prewriting in February, and technically started writing some of the novel in February, but ended up scrapping much of what I'd written towards the end of March and more or less starting from scratch. So, depending on how you look at it, I either started in November 2016, February 2017, or late March 2017. I personally prefer the latter of the three, as that most accurately represents the time I spent writing more or less uninterrupted prose for the novel, from beginning to end.
• End Date: 30 May 2017, and two days before the deadline I'd set for myself! I'm pretty happy about that. I'm also happy about the fact that I basically wrote an entire novel in two months, especially considering the first draft of DF took me about six months, and the first draft of DI took me more than a year.

And, well, that's the gist of it. Long story short, I'm happy to be done with a draft of Blood Requiem, and feel very good about the story at this point in time as well as where I think it will go in revisions.

Stay tuned for some stuff on the two writing retreats I participated in that helped me plow through Book 3 in so short a time, as well as information on the Dark Immolation book launch, and more!

Consistency (or: How I Got Published, Part 4)

Last week we talked about writing a novel. This week, let’s talk about finishing one. The two concepts are certainly worlds apart.

Once I made the commitment to finish a novel, things got a bit easier—but the fight wasn’t over. Sitting down and getting words on the page—writing on a relatively consistent schedule—was difficult. I’ve experienced the process of writing a novel (for the most part) twice—with Duskfall in 2010 and now with Dark Immolation (which I haven’t technically finished yet, but I’m getting very, very close). My process through writing both novels has been similar in many ways, but different in others.

My DF process was less disciplined. I did not have a specific time of day in which I wrote, and I did not write every day (although I did write most days, which I find pretty impressive, looking back on it). But here, why don’t you take a look at the following table, first:

DATE	(prose)	(notes)	(revisions)
Jan-Feb 2010	20,000	7,000	5,000
Tue 2 March 2010	2,500	100	2,500
Wed 3 March 2010	3,500	400
Thu 4 March 2010	1,500
Fri 5 March 2010
Sat 6 March 2010
Sun 7 March 2010
Mon 8 March 2010	1,700		2,500
Tue 9 March 2010	3,700
Wed 10 March 2010	2,600	500
Thu 11 March 2010		2,500
Fri 12 March 2010		2,500
Sat 13 March 2010		2,000
Sun 14 March 2010
Mon 15 March 2010	4,500	3,000	3,100
Tue 16 March 2010	3,400	2,900
Wed 17 March 2010
Thu 18 March 2010	3,100
Fri 19 March 2010	1,100
Sat 20 March 2010	2,000
Sun 21 March 2010
Mon 22 March 2010	2,500	200	3,800
Tue 23 March 2010	2,300
Wed 24 March 2010	2,200	300	500
Thu 25 March 2010	900	100
Fri 26 March 2010
Sat 27 March 2010	1,700	1,500	400
Sun 28 March 2010
Mon 29 March 2010	2,100		1,900
Tue 30 March 2010	3,600	150
Wed 31 March 2010	2,700	300
Thu 1 April 2010	2,400	300
Fri 2 April 2010	500	500
Sat 3 April 2010
Sun 4 April 2010
Mon 5 April 2010		200	3,600
Tues 6 April 2010	2,700	400	500
Wed 7 April 2010	4,100
Thu 8 April 2010	2,300
Fri 9 April 2010	4,100		1,100
Sat 10 April 2010	3,300
Sun 11 April 2010
Mon 12 April 2010	2,800	200	2,000
Tue 13 April 2010		400	5,000
Wed 14 April 2010
Thu 15 April 2010
Fri 16 April 2010
Sat 17 April 2010
Sun 18 April 2010
Mon 19 April 2010	1,000	200
Tue 20 April 2010	1,300
Wed 21 April 2010
Thu 22 April 2010	2,800
Fri 23 April 2010	1,000
Sat 24 April 2010
Sun 25 April 2010
Mon 26 April 2010
Tue 27 April 2010	4,400
Wed 28 April 2010	4,400
Thu 29 April 2010	4,200	300
Fri 30 April 2010	3,300	100
Sat 1 May 2010
Sun 2 May 2010
Mon 3 May 2010	3,000	400
Tue 4 May 2010	3,400	150
Wed 5 May 2010	4,100
Thu 6 May 2010	3,100
Fri 7 May 2010	2,800
Sat 8 May 2010
Sun 9 May 2010
Mon 10 May 2010	4,300
Tue 11 May 2010
Wed 12 May 2010
Thu 13 May 2010
Fri 14 May 2010
Sat 15 May 2010
Sun 16 May 2010
Mon 17 May 2010	5,300
Tue 18 May 2010	3,600
Wed 19 May 2010	5,200
Thu 20 May 2010	5,000	600
Fri 21 May 2010	3,100
Sat 22 May 2010
Sun 23 May 2010
Mon 24 May 2010	2,500
Tue 25 May 2010	1,000
Wed 26 May 2010	2,200
Thu 27 May 2010	2,300	700
Fri 28 May 2010
Sat 29 May 2010
Sun 30 May 2010
Mon 31 May 2010
Tue 1 June 2010	2,100	300
Wed 2 June 2010	1,500	200
Thu 3 June 2010	3,000	700
Fri 4 June 2010	14,600	1,000

A brief explanation: the first column is the dates during the six months I worked on DF (you’ll notice that the first row is for the entire months of January and February—that’s because I didn’t record on a daily basis how much I was writing per day until March). The second column is the number of new words I wrote in DF on each day—if the space is blank, that means I wrote nothing that day. The third column tracks how many words’ worth of notes I made in my worldbuilding document/series bible for DF. And the fourth shows how many words I revised that day, if any.

As you can see, DF was pretty inconsistent. I wrote in streaks, sometimes getting words in every weekday, while going more than a week without writing anything at others. My word count for each day varied pretty widely (from as little as 500 to as much as 14,600*), and I did a fair amount of writing in the series bible and revisions. It is interesting to note, however, that my revision writing stopped in April, and I did not revise any further until I finished the novel, which fits more into my current first-draft philosophy.

I won’t include a table for my current progress on Dark Immolation, mainly because it is much more consistent, and thus a bit boring—I write between 2000-2500 words/day (on rare days I get around 3k), 4-5 days/week. I’m not tracking worldbuilding notes or revisions, namely because I’m not doing much of either at the moment. (I write worldbuilding entires in my series bible often enough, but I’ve made a point this time around of never going back to revise anything. It tends to break up my momentum, and I want to get through the story first before I make any significant revisions. Also, if I continually revise, I risk falling back into my “eternal first drafts” mode, and nobody wants that.)

It took me almost exactly six months to write the first draft of DF, while I’ve been writing DI for a little over seven months now and still haven’t finished. I blame that mostly on length, however—the first draft of DF was around 180K, while DI’s current word count is almost 200K, and I still have about seven chapters to go. So I don’t think my speed has increased or decreased all that much, but there's a lot more to writing than speed. Consistency, I've found, is key.

DI has come along so much more easily than DF, and I think that is largely because I am a much more consistent writer. I get up at roughly the same time every day (6:30 or 7), go through the same routine every morning until about 9:30 or 10:00 AM, which is when I start writing. I then write until the point of diminishing returns**, or until I get to 2000K, whichever takes longest. The rest of my day is reserved for worldbuilding, research, reading, blogging, email, and so forth. That consistency has helped a lot. For one thing, I can actually get some writing and the aforementioned stuff done on a daily basis—something I couldn’t do when writing DF. And while I don’t have as many days where my word count spikes (you’ll notice when I wrote DF there were a number of days where I hit in the high 3k, sometimes the 4 or 5k marks), I find it easier to step into the world every morning, to get into the minds of the characters and see what they see, hear what they hear, and understand what they do.

That’s not to say that I had no consistency when writing DF—looking at that schedule, I’m actually impressed that I could be that disciplined given my writing philosophy and mental state at the time. You can still see hints of “binge” writing, but it certainly has traces of consistency, and I think that’s a large reason why I was able to finish the novel at all. But my current experience seems more efficient, relatively painless, and definitely more satisfying.

So if you have the desire, and you’ve made the commitment to write a novel, I suggest you then work on writing consistently to finish it. Find a time of day that works for you, and make that your Writing Time. Maybe it’s every day, maybe it’s once a week, maybe it’s at four in the morning, maybe it’s at two in the afternoon. But make the time, and keep boundaries so you can stick with it. It’s simple logic, really—if I write a bit every day, or every weekday, or every week, or whatever works for me, I am going to finish that novel at some point or another. That’s how writing works—you put the effort in, and you see the results. Those results come a lot easier when the effort is consistent.

* Biggest writing day I’ve had to date, btw—when I finished DF. 14,600 words in roughly ten hours of writing. It was euphoric. And, even today, that’s kind of my exception to my no-writing-binge philosophy; I’ve found that when I get close to the ending of a story, I feel like a shark that gotten its first sniff of blood, and I often go into a writing frenzy until I finish the thing.

** What do I mean by the “point of diminishing returns,” you ask? Simply put, I kind of have a finite amount of writing “energy” in me each day. I write until the point when that natural energy is gone. If I try to push past that point, I become less and less productive, until I’m suddenly spending 9 minutes on Facebook/Twitter/writing email/reading/otherwise dinking around for every 1 minute I’m actually writing. Efficiency is far more important to me than writing myself to death. Figuratively speaking.