Stats!

It has been way too long, but I finally have some stats for you.

The original title for this novel was just "Kuzunoha's Story", which changed just before last Nanowrimo to Kitsune-Ken. Kitsune-Ken, while an awesome name, didn't really apply to just this story, so it became my series name. Just last month, the final name I chose suggested itself... Hunter.

Kitsune-Ken (狐県) is the name of a Japanese game. It's basically a type of rock, paper, scissors game, where your choices are Hunter, Fox, and Village Head, though I always remember it better as Lord. The game is played by making hand symbols, like in rock, paper, scissors, but instead of just one hand, you use both hands. To make the sign for Hunter, you move your hands to mimic holding a rifle. To make the sign for Fox, you put both hands up above your head as if they were a fox's ears. To make the sign for Lord, you sit up straight and lay both hands on your legs. In the game, the hunter beats the fox with his gun, the fox beats the lord by tricking him and the lord beats the hunter by being of a higher social class. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is also a version of this where players lose an article of clothing each time they lose a round.

Hunter was originally 175 pages long when finished and was 76,224 words long. The current version is only 169 pages and 65,263 words long. The original chapters were much longer; I only had 34 of them (and one was nearly 15 pages). The current version has chapters much closer to each other in length; about 4 pages average and has 41 chapters.

The first 17k were written during Nanowrimo nearly two years ago. However, I admit that what I'd written was essentially trash and it sat around on my hard drive guilting me into doing something with it. At When Words Collide 2015, I started playing with it again and apparently had sudden realized what was supposed to happen. I worked on that first 17,000 words and applied essentially heavy cutting and editing techniques before nano and cut it down to nearly 10 of words that would need to be re-written, but would do as a starting place. During Nanowrimo, I wrote another 68,635. but somewhere between 1,000 and 4,000 of it was notes on characters, places or future storylines that didn't fit within the bounds of this novel.

Kuzunoha is the main character and she has the lion's share of the chapters at 21 out of 41. Richard is the next biggest character in the story with 13 chapters. Skylla has 3 and Jocelin and Himiko both have 2. This means for all of you that want a lot of female viewpoints in your books that about 2/3 of this novel is written from a female viewpoint!

And I think that's where I'll stop. Do you guys have any questions about it?

Well, that's all she wrote...

Well, that's it, that's all she wrote, I'm done.
Except that you're never really done when you're creative. There's always another book to write, another picture to draw, another song to create... there's always something more to do.
I am finished with Hunter, the first book of my Kitsune-Ken series. I've sent it out to beta readers (though really another one or two would be helpful) and I'm waiting for them to get back to me on it. With their aid and suggestions, hopefully I can make it even better. Then its a quick trip to a professional editor, while I work on covers and figure out how the publishing world works and...
Like I said, there's always another thing to do when you're creative. This book will hopefully be released just before Christmas this year, though I'll have to adjust that after I find out more from the editor.
In addition to that, I'm planing on what's going to happen in book 3 of this series. I'm going to be writing it during Nanowrimo this year, so another thing on my authory plate.
I will have stats for you... total word count, chapter from a female/male pov, average chapter length... interesting things like that. But for right now, I've been enjoying my rest. Reading, video games, giving blood... I even hosted a painting night!
Soon enough, I'll be back to work, planning, writing short stories, and doing other assorted authorly things. But for this week, there is rest and sleep and relaxation.
What do you guys do to relax after finishing a huge project? Do you have any suggestions for any great books for me to add to my reading list?

So close...

Two more chapters to edit. Literally, just two. I'll be working to finish it this weekend. Friday would be preferable, but I'll take it whenever it's done. I can't wait to have this finished and ready to send out to my beta readers. I'm going to be incommunicado till I finish it. I can say that it's currently at 61,000 words and that I am super excited to be so close to finishing it off.

Bleh.😑

I have been busy lately. Two birthdays this week and the only person in my section at my day job, which means that I haven't even been working as much as I would like. Still, I only have 8.5k left to go so that's something. Hopefully I'll finish another chapter today and be done this week. I am looking forward to having time off to relax completely before I plan my next book and start writing. For those of you playing at home, this means I should be writing during Nanowrimo this year. So woot! Will you be writing? What will you be working on if you do?