50,000 and Counting

We just got past the 50,000 word mark on "For Honor We Stand" and are happy with the progress versus the time line we have set for ourselves. As things are going we are still on track for publication in January 2013. We are still having the sense that this is going to be a slightly longer book. Book One was 137,000 words, whereas this one is looking more like 150-160,000. Just a guess, of course.

We are still very pleased both with the sales and with the reviews of the first book. Folks seem to like what we did the first time around. Of course, we haven't perfectly pleased everyone which, as we did not perfectly please ourselves, is not a surprise. As we have said repeatedly, not only was Book One our first novel, it was our first effort at any kind of meaningful fiction writing of any kind, ever. That we did not get buried in one star reviews saying "You suck--you couldn't write a decent excuse to get your kid out of PE class," was not a given, as far as we were concerned.

But, mostly, we try to ignore the sales numbers and the reviews while focusing on story telling. The chapters continue to come out of the computer and we aren't having any problems producing them. The ideas are there, and not just for this book, but for the next, and the next, and the next. Seriously, the more we work on this stuff, the more it is looking as though we have material for at least ten, if not thirty, books. Our universe is deliberately constructed to permit open-ended story-telling. And, if Max gets too old, we can continue with the adventures of Captain Shepherd or Captain Park, who are Midshipmen in Book One.