Progress Report on New Books

Good morning to all the Archer’s Aim readers. Taking a break from my fiction writing today to share some of what I’m working on with my newest books. There’s quite a lot to do so it’s sometimes difficult to parse it all out well. Even now, I’m beginning my plans to release the book and I haven’t even completed the edited version for my editor.

First, I’m going back to complete as much of the world-building for both Reformed Mage (aka RM) and Black Glove (aka BG). My main focus is on RM at the moment but BG will soon have my focus too. I’m using World Anvil and Notebook.ai which are development services which can be used for free or pay. I can keep my notes there and play around with the details as well as record what I’ve already written down to very specific levels. The main problem is that I wrote these originally at a very fast pace such that I never spent enough time on the world-building. Now I’m going back to fill-in the proverbial blanks.

In addition to the world-building, I’m working to split my initial book for RM into three books. Yes, it was that long and required I make the move after consulting with my editor who has been a big help. In conjunction with the world-building, I’m creating consistency throughout the books and include all the various points that occur in the books so that they don’t jar a reader with mistakes. Likewise, and I don’t want to share too much at this point, the book is organized in a different story-arc so I must create a balance of understandable progression that avoids confusion. It’s a challenging book in many ways with the depth of characterization, world-building and story details that it seems like a very tangled mess at times. Organizing the content and the details is a frustratingly slow process at times because I’m dedicated to making the book as fun and excellent as possible. Developing a user guide and writing some blog posts to use in the future help ground my thinking about the entirety of the series and the first book afford me clarity about it all. I am dedicated to completing and releasing the first book this year, maybe a second or third since I have the basic content available. Once I have the first book developed and edited enough, the next two books should be much easier to complete. But I’ll have to get there to know for sure.

Additionally, working with my artist regarding a thematic set of series covers is on the to-do list. Likewise, I’m going to print upon launch so I’ll be working with a formatter as editing on the first book progresses. Interestingly, I’ll also approach my audio publisher with the books in hopes they will pick the series up in time for launch or soon thereafter. My feeling on audio is that this will depend on possible pre-launch sales so it may well arrive several month later than the first book. But, if the series is accepted, the next two books may will be in audio when those are launched. The production of the series is it’s own job but I’ve done it previously and know what I want to do with this series more than my first one.

All that is just with RM but there’s more to work on this year too. BG is on the back-burner at the moment but needs to be run through a series of edits to get to publication. It’s already well along in the process and I’ve considered even placing it on Inkshares which is a hybrid publisher (meaning the expense is shared). If this book were accepted, it also gets full placement in all of the different sales venues just like a traditionally published book. I hesitate to give up the royalty percentage and any residual rights so I’m still thinking the option through at the moment. The plus side is that it’s doing something while I’m working on RM and increases the possibility of getting both series launched this year. I still think launching both is doable but the possibility of publishing two different ways is intriguing.

BG is a solid project and I want to get to it as soon as possible. Along the same lines, I want to begin planning a sequel series to The Bow of Hart Saga for next year, possibly dictating it on my commutes to get it going. That will take some doing as I want to improve the accuracy of my dictation software with some work. There are other series I want to launch that will be solid projects too but doing all of them requires more time than I have just now but I’d like to eventually get to where I’m releasing a book a quarter from a different series which is likely just a pipe-dream. I have at least two other first in series novels completed as rough drafts, both of which require more world-building. These are long-term projects but something I’m interested in completing as soon as possible over the next couple of years.

That’s what my writing looks like these days. The calendar is full and there something constantly in need of my attention. I’ll start sharing some of my related work on the series as soon as I can along with artwork, a release date and other news. Look for another progress report soon.