The word count just crossed 60,000 on For Honor We Stand, Book Two of the "Man of War" Trilogy. We are now working our way through some serious issues on board ship--the problems from the "Cumberland Gap" days are not all behind us. The rot runs too deep to be cut out in just a few months. And, Max is about to run into a superior with whom he has--shall we say--a frictional interface. No, it is not smooth sailing for Max. Not smooth sailing at all.
In case anyone is wondering, we are still looking at a January release. The target is January 21, 2013. Why January 21? Max took (takes? will take?) command of the Cumberland on January 21, 2315. But, if it is done before then, we will publish before then. That's one of the benefits of being independent--we publish when we like and, if we want to publish when the book is ready instead of holding out for some sort of artificial deadline, then we publish.
Now that we are in Novel Writing Mode, our brains keep running ahead to the future books. We are wondering whether readers would prefer that the books be written as a series of trilogies with long but distinct story arcs that are closed out at the end of each three-book cycle while maintaining one overarching story arc or whether readers like a series like the Aubry/Maturin books of Patrick O'Brian where there is simply one continuous narrative told in a series of individual books. There is time to make your views heard, and we are listening. Paul is leaning toward the series of trilogies and Harvey likes following in the footsteps of O'Brian.
No rush. We have committed to doing the first three books as a trilogy and that is what we are going to do. We still have about one and a half books to write until the issue of what to do with Book 4 is something we have to deal with.
2 comments:
I would prefer if you kept the series to several trilogies.
And just as a tip I hope that you are able to keep your date of January 21, because if you are not able for whatever reason. Then the disappointment I would feel as a reader, would be several times greater than if you had not given a specific date.
Anyways have a nice Christmas
Thanks for the input. Based on the experience of writing one and half novels so far, it is looking like our muse is better adapted to the series of trilogies format. Our storytelling seems to gravitate toward detailed narratives of fairly brief periods of time. In order to move the larger story arc of the Krag war forward at a reasonable pace, we would need to write three books set close together in time, then pick up the story several months or even a year or two later and do the same thing. And, on the deadline, I don't think it is going to be an issue, unless there is some sort of family problem or health issue. We are way ahead of schedule and making good progress. We know where we are going and we don't seem to be prone to getting stuck or writers block or anything like that. Again, thanks for the comment. Drop us a line any time.
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