Endings and Beginnings

Book four is officially done! The rough draft, in all its unedited glory, has been pushed to the side. As is my usual routine, it will be glanced at in September/October, but otherwise, won't see the light of day until book 3 is with my beta readers or my editor. Book four came in at 107k which is a whale of a book for me. I expect editing will be frustrating as heck as well. Fortunately, that is a problem for future me, so I can safely ignore it. 

Instead, I'm working on book three. Now, the third book came in at 102k when I first opened the document. Fortunately, a lot of that was notes and alternate chapters. See, a lot of my writing process is just me throwing spaghetti at a wall until my mind connects the dots. So, if you were wondering why there was a sudden crab hunt in Hunter's Gambit, I can say that it wasn't planned from the beginning. Instead, I knew what my characters were going to find when they got there, but didn't know how they were going to find it. So, I started writing that chapter and stared at my computer wondering why I was writing about crabs until my mind connected the nodes in my mind. Alternate chapters pop up when I finish a chapter and realize that its bad and I hate it or (more commonly) that the story was being told from the wrong POV and needs to be rewritten. 

So, the good news? Book three is already down to 92k. That's with just easy edits, removing notes, chapters that I'd already known I was going to have to get rid of eventually and that sort of stuff. Some of my chapters that seemed to not fit at the end of book two have been added to three and I have already gone over it once, putting things in order. My next edit is one where I go through and I really look at my plot. I've already found two chapters that are going to be deleted and another seven that will require complete rewrites. While this seems like a lot, its actually less than I was expecting. Between changes made to book two and now knowing where book four is going, I would have been surprised if there were less than that. 

Honestly, what I'm surprised at most this time around is how easy it is to see things like chapters that can be deleted. Knowing that I need parts of those chapters, but not there and not alone, really helps me to figure out how to tighten my writing. Its my hope that figuring this out at this stage will also make my editing go way faster. I haven't hidden the fact that I'm very new to this, which means that I'm still figuring out how to work best and how to speed up so that I can get these books out to you faster. 

Lord's Curse - Pre-Final Edit Stats

I am overly fond of book stats. I don't know why... its just something that always interests me. So today, we're going to geek over the current stats of my novel Lord's Curse. Fair warning that some of these change before the book comes out... This is prior to my final edit, of course, so the exact numbers will probably change. 

Photo by João Silas on Unsplash

Okay, big story stuff first. Lord's Curse was originally just titled Lord since I knew I wanted to use the game Kitsune-ken as the basis for each novel's name. Not directly focused on Lord, but connected, means that the next books also need names that fit in with this convention even if they don't have to do directly with the game. I haven't decided what all the names will be yet, but I do have eyes on the names Fox's Facade and Noble's Choice for books 3 and 4, respectively.

Going back to the Lord's Curse, specifically the inner workings, my novel is currently 93,847 words long if we don't count the chapter titles as words. It has 44 chapters. While my first book was more based on the girl's pov's (unintentionally for the most part), this novel focuses a lot more on Richard's and Deckard's point of view, though it didn't feel that way when I wrote it. Deckard and Richard each come in at 14 chapters, with Kuzunoha next in the running with 10 chapters. Himiko has 5 and Isashi has only 1. This doesn't mean that the girls don't have their own issues in this novel... just that, in general, the conflict seemed to be with the guys this novel.

The average chapter size for a 93,847-word book with 44 chapters would b 2,132 words long. The chapter that is closest to that total is chapter 18 with 2,106 words. The chapter with the least amount has 1,026 words in it and the chapter with the most has 3,014 words.

Each of the five longest chapters in the book was written one from each character's point-of-view.  The order goes down this way, Deckard (3,014 words), Kuzunoha (2,972 words), Himiko (2,845 words), Richard (2,712 words) and Isashi (2,603 words). I didn't do this deliberately... I just thought it was really cool.

What about you guys? Do you like weird book stats? Let me know!

Vitajte

I'm going to start off on a bit of a one-off comment here. Sometimes, I love looking at my blog stats. Today, I'm laughing because the most views of the week has come from Slovakia. Most likely its a bot, since the most used languages there are Slovak followed by Czech (though both use the Latin alphabet like English, so you never know...). On the off chance it isn't a bot, Vitajte to my Slovakian readers! If you aren't a bot, let me know by leaving a comment below, in whatever language you use. Google translate is a thing and I'm not above using it if it enhances communication.

Actually, looking at my stats, though most of my readers are in Canada, with the next largest country being (unsurprisingly) the United States, the next three are from Slovakia, Portugal and Germany. While I actually do know people in Germany (Hello Uncle Ragnar and Dan Wells*), I have to say that I think I've ever met anyone from Slovakia or Portugal. Part of me hopes it isn't the bots. I'd like to have a diverse readership when I start publishing. 

That does bring to mind Dan Wells, again though. He's an author (of Writing Excuses podcast fame as well as writing two of my favourite series - Partials and I am Not a Serial Killer) who found after publishing that most of his readership was in Germany, not his home country of America. Though I don't think that will happen to me, I'd be honoured if it did. I wonder how many writers look at their readership and viewers and how many of them are surprised by where they're most popular, especially indie writers who may be publishing everything online. 

The other thing I will mention, is that my productivity has suffered this week all due to Don't Starve. Every time I make the mistake of turning that game on, I lose hours to it without even noticing. Because of that and other general busyness, I only got a two and a half chapters finished. Bleh, back to editing... I'll make a deal with myself. After I finish editing this novel (and have most of my presentation figured out for August), I can play for a week straight with no regrets while I plan my next novel. 

*Note: While I'm throwing around Dan Wells name here, I don't actually know him in a "we're friends" way. Basically we've chatted on Twitter three or four times. If you haven't read his books, especially the above mentioned series, go find them. He's an awesome author. If you're in the stats, you can also look for his I am Not a Serial Killer book which is currently being made into a movie/theatre play right now. I'm linking his blog here, so you can find out all about his stuff as well.
TheDanWells