Bonus Alpennia Post: Projecting a First Draft

[hrj]

I've demonstrated to my own satisfaction that, as long as I'm not out of town running off to conventions, I can hold to a writing pace of one chapter per week, even when I have no pre-existing draft text. I've completed 10 chapters of Mother of Souls. The outline (and this is a much more solid outline than what I started with for The Mystic Marriage, which ended up being expanded by four chapters) calls for a total of 33 chapters. (Wow, almost 2/3 done!) With 23 more to go, and subtracting out any weeks that I know I'll spend in transit, that brings me up to the first week of February. So I figure the end of February for initial revisions. Then two months for beta readers and incorporating their feedback, which brings us to the end of April. Plus a month or so for sloppage and poor estimations. I think I can sent in a proposal to my publisher that indicates a delivery date of the end of June and feel fairly confident about that.

Maybe I'll spend some time tomorrow drawing up the official proposal and outline.

Comments

[kareina.livejournal.com]

I have lost count, and since I am reading on a phone app while travelling, can't easily look it up. Is there another Alpenia book further along in the publishing process between The Mystic Marriage and Mother of Souls

Damn post button right next to backspace

[kareina.livejournal.com]

There might have been a question mark and some additional words to that comment, if I could operate a phone keyboard properly. Something along the lines of wondering if we need to wait for Mother of Souls or if the delay till our next Alpenia fix is shorter than that...

[hrj.livejournal.com]

No, Mother of Souls comes right after The Mystic Marriage. Writing goals are a tricky thing. Once upon a time, I had a goal that I'd have the manuscript for The Mystic Marriage turned in around the time that Daughter of Mystery came out. I was "late" by over 6 months, and I'd gotten a fair headstart on it during the revisions cycles for DoM. I took a bit of a break after turning in The Mystic Marriage -- spent some time nattering at the plots of the next two books, and wrote a whole slew of short fiction (five pieces, including something almost a novella). Although date-stamps on files indicate that I'd started creating some text (or at least notes) for the first half-dozen chapters of Mother of Souls back in October/November 2014. But I didn't seriously set myself a program of working on it steadily until after The Mystic Marriage was out in April. It is barely possible that Mother of Souls might come out before the end of 2016 if Bella has an available slot at the end of the year and are willing to trust my delivery estimate. (For MM I didn't send in the official proposal until I had a first draft complete because I had no way to know how long it would take.)

The next two books after that should come more quickly as they're planned to be shorter. And somewhere in there will be another piece of short fiction in the series I've come to think of as "The Memoirs of the Vicomtesse de Cherdillac", but although I'll be offering it as a freebie, it can't come out until Floodtide has been published.

So, yeah, it's a bit of a wait for your next Alpennia fix. Eventually I hope to get on a solid one-book-a-year schedule but I'm still finding my rhythm.

[kareina.livejournal.com]

Ok, that is why my memory was uncertain--I knew I had heard you mention more than one of the future books you have in line, and so lost track of which ones were more in the outline stage, and which ones had gone into the production stage. Thanks for taking the time to clarify the plans. I would love it if you could manage a book a year, but only if you are enjoying the process and can do so in such a way as to maintain your standards of writing and background research. I would much rather wait longer for a better book than see you slip into the "need to write down something quick and publish ASAP, no one will notice if it isn't as good" trap.

And I am delighted to hear you have stuff going for her memoirs, I so want to hear more of her life!

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

Yay! Less than a year! I can try to be patient that long.