Chelsea Harper's Blog, page 2

Artifice of Power Update # 20

Well, this week came out just over 5,000 words for weekly progress, which is decent movement forward. I missed my 7,000 word goal mostly because I had a busy work week and some personal family commitments to handle, which is just going to happen sometimes. However, I did get past the block I had with Niamsha last week and moved into what I hope is the last chapter I don’t have a plan for in my head. That might be a bad thing–I tend to write better when I don’t have a plan–but I’m close enough to the end now that my usual “let’s see where this goes” attitude doesn’t work anymore. It needs to go in the right direction or the book won’t have a resolution, and no one wants that. A couple notable events about this week’s writing:

Niamsha took some initiative and got herself and some friends into trouble. I’m happy with the direction that’s heading, which is giving me a strong resolution to work toward for her storylineKilasha got dragged back into the rest of the action for a bit, but only on the sidelines. Not quite sure how that’s going to resolve just yet, so that’s in an interesting placeThe total draft is currently at just over 124,000 words, which is 73% of my original goal word count. I’ve said before that I expect this draft to run a bit long, but we’ll see where we end up. This is just the first round, after allThoughts on diverging storylines

I know a lot of authors are actually quite concerned when their characters end up in separate locations not directly interacting with each other regularly. I’m thinking about that today because my characters have been wandering all over the place and rarely have anything to do with each other directly. However, their decisions are causing ripples through larger communities that other characters have to react to, so its all weaving into the same plot. My initial response to this structure was to worry if readers would be frustrated by not seeing the characters have direct conflict and face each other down. Then I remembered Lord of the Rings.

The opening of Fellowship of the Rings focuses entirely on Sam, Frodo, Merry, and Pippin and we see them entirely together. They struggle because of forces beyond their control. They meet Strider and eventually get to Rivendel and the Fellowship is formed. But moving forward from there, the group stays together a pretty short period of time before Sam and Frodo go off one way, Merry and Pippin have their own thing going on, and Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli go their way. And for the rest of the story, it isn’t that the characters don’t interact so much as that they don’t physically see each other.

A similar pattern is visible in Wheel of Time. The characters start together, gather a few more allies, and then end up split and doing their own thing. They’re still working toward the same goals and mostly in support of each other, but they each have their own problems to solve. Same with Game of Thrones, as well, and many other epic fantasy books.

It’s interesting to me, then, that many authors I’ve spoken to worry about separating their characters. Don’t we have to separate them in a longer series? If I kept them all together, how would any of them form their own paths? I’m interested now to find series with a larger cast of characters that don’t separate for the majority of the later portions of the series. How do the characters grow within the confines of a group dynamic?

Artifice of Power Update # 19

Unfortunately, I ended up having a middling week this week, coming in at about 4,600 words out of my 7,000 word goal. The primary problem was actually writing this week, though. I had long known I had a problem with Niamsha’s plot line throughout the book and it was top of my editing priority list. However, given that I am just shy of 120k into this draft, I wanted to finish the draft before addressing that problem. But on Thursday, I got stuck. She needs to be active through the last third or so of the book, but she had spent a couple chapters being understandably passive and I didn’t know how to get her moving again.

After two days of barely writing and trying to get something figured out, I think I have it now. After all, she has been unusually passive because of the actions of other characters, and she is surely chafing at that as much as I am. I know what she would do in response and how that’s going to play into the larger story. Unfortunately, that solution came to me this morning, not last night, so I didn’t have time to implement it. But I have it for this coming week!

Here’s the updates from the week’s writing that did get done.

Saylina finally made a new ally in her political schemes… maybe, if their goals really alignArkaen got himself in charge of a group planning to strike back at their enemiesMy current word count total for the draft is 118k

Not quite as much in my accomplishments as I had wanted for the week, but like I said…Niamsha really threw me for a loop. Talk to you all next week!

Artifice of Power Update # 18

Update is a day late today somewhat by expectation… I was away this weekend for my ten year anniversary with my husband. Unfortunately, that also means that my word count for last week was extremely low. I only got about 1,500 words last weekend. That said, I actually made some progress in preparation for the next steps. I’ve got a really great sense for how the action is going to move through the next few chapters into building final conflict of the story. Even though I’m getting started a day late this week, I’m expecting a good word count this week.

Artifice of Power Update # 17

Much better this week, though I’m just a bit short of my weekly goal. I hit about 6,000 words this week, fixed a very weak chapter which addressed the persistent problem I had mentioned being worried about earlier, and got a couple more chapters completed. This is a pretty short but positive update, with great progress coming off a rough week where everyone was sick. Here’s a few notable updates from the work this week.

The Arkaen and Niamsha moments I had completed a couple weeks ago needed a bit of a tone shift and I got that done in a rewrite of the chapterKilasha learned something critical and took major steps toward his major contribution to the storylineI got a really interesting new addition to the progress of politics in Sentar ProvinceTotal word count for the draft is just shy of 113k words, with 125k words written since I started this project (the redrafts are a tiny part of the work I did now, which feels really good!)

Artifice of Power Update # 16

Here’s my weekly update and unfortunately, this week didn’t go well for writing. And I don’t mean “I had a rough week and only got 5,000 words written even though that’s triple what other authors write in a week”, either. I got my goals on track for about a day and then got hit with a nasty cold that had me laid up in bed for a couple days, then hit my husband so I had to take over all child-management while still sick and working full days, then it hit my kiddo. I still got about 1,200 words written and I am still feeling good about my progress in the book overall. I am about 10k words past the middle of the book, after all, and the progress is pretty smooth when I get to it… but this wasn’t a writing week

I initially said, in the beginning of these updates, that I wanted to have early warning for my readers if I was falling off. I think we can all understand that one week where my entire household was sick is just a blip, not a crisis. It still feels off, though, and it is making me intentionally push my timeline back into late October for finishing the draft instead of late September.

Now, of course one week of lost progress doesn’t require an entire month to make up, but this blip isn’t the only reason for that adjustment. Another major reason is that my ten-year anniversary with my husband is in two weeks and I’m not expecting great writing progress while I’m out learning falconry on a weekend excursion with my husband. I’ve also had a couple of instances where I wanted to go back to earlier parts of the draft and make substantial adjustments so that later portions flow better. That has meant that while I kept my writing numbers goals, my actual progress through the book has derailed a couple times. I have probably 60k words left to write, and doing that in 30 days would require doubling my daily goals. That’s asking a lot.

The good news is that I baked some leeeway into my timelines, so pushing the end of this draft back into late October shouldn’t delay the actual release date, since I’m planning my first round of serious feedback to prep final edit in January. Still plenty of time to get this book ready for next year’s release. The adjustment may affect some of the other, secondary projects I had for supplemental material, but of course, those are of less importance than the actual novel anyway.

Sorry I don’t have great new progress to report, but we all have those weeks where everything else just needs our time. I’m excited to finally have time to get back to writing this week!

Artifice of Power Update # 15

So being late on my updates is becoming a habit. Let’s just all collectively agree that I’ll get an update out on Saturdays… Sometime. Actually, I should be a lot more reliable about my updates come late September because that will be after the end of my publishing course that I am taking to improve my distribution of my books. But for now…I had a bit of a rough week. between the course, a lot of work for the day job, and an open house for my kiddo, I only managed just over 5,300 words last week.

I’ve previously mentioned that 5k words per week isn’t really slow (consider, for example, that reliably writing 5k words per week drafts a 160k word novel in about eight months, which is lightning fast for some epic fantasy authors). It is, however, slow for me, and it’s evidence that I had two days where I just couldn’t quite get things moving and only managed 300 words, one day where I was too busy to get any writing done at all, and another where I was a couple hundred short of my goal. Still, progress is being made, and I have some new highlights to share.

Saylina got invested in some imperial politics beyond just what she needs for her home provinceMy new POV character for this book is building some interesting add-ons to the events, which I’m pretty excited aboutKilasha is about to find something very concerning and I’m not quite sure how he’s going to react. I think he’s going to do something very unusual for him.Looking Forward… Some more

A quick note on upcoming edits. It’s clear to me now that this early draft suffers from a particular recurring issue, which is going to require additional edits after this draft is done. The good news is that, having identified the problem, I can address it in edits and writing forward. The bad news is, this problem is prevalent enough that I’m concerned edits may take more time than expected. I’m not saying six extra months of edits, but I had a plan to be editing and drafting at the same time, and this may mean “editing” becomes “redrafting”, which would make drafting new content a lot harder. This said, I am still hopeful that I have the time to fix the problem early and avoid delaying my original rapid release plan for next year. I’ll always prioritize a higher quality book over meeting a deadline, but I’m definitely making plans to solve this editing need without too many delays. I want these books out where readers can enjoy them!

Artifice of Power Update # 14

Wow. It has been a busy couple days, and I didn’t get this out when I wanted to. However, I’m happy to report this was a failing up updating progress, not a failure to make progress. I wrote 8,200 words last week, the novel’s total word count is at 101,600, and I am an entire chapter past my mid-point event. Great progress this week! Here’s a few notable events:

Saylina is finding some interesting elements of her family history and making plans to shift what she intended for her roleArkaen and Niamsha are actually working toward the same thing, or they think they areKilasha made a decision I was not expecting, and I’m pretty interested to see what happens there. It’s the right decision for his character, but I really thought he was going a different wayI’m getting to play with some larger politics, explore some of the immense history of these lands, and put some fun twists into this book as things get further along

This update is very short because I do have a lot going on today still, but I wanted to be sure to update readers that I didn’t forget and I am continuing to make progress. Honestly, this book is shaping up into something I like, and is headed back toward paths I originally intended in early drafts. Just a lot better honed and more grounded than my initial concepts.

Artifice of Power Update # 13

Family in town again this week, so I was running a bit short on word count. Still, I managed just over 5,000 words written and got to 55% of my expected word count. I’m at the point right before the major, midpoint shift, which I now know what it’s going to be… as much as I ever do before it’s written, as a discovery writer who really has no guardrails on my stories. Word counts do imply that Act 1 did run a little long, as I expected, but there’s editing time for that. Notable events this week:

Sayli has a personal mission now that’s going to bring her into some of the larger events. I’m really excited for her movement through this part of the story, since she’s the main political force at the momentKilasha got some interesting new clues, and is probably going to miss something pretty important (though, he’s omniscient and I’m not, so who knows, really…)Emperor Deyvan is up to something, but no one seems to know what. That’s one of my favorite characters, actually. I’m looking forward to getting him more into this series.Current draft word count sits at 93,300, with about 70k to 80k left to write for the first draft. And then the editing beginsRelease planning

I’ve talked a couple time about plans for releasing books over the next year and none of that has changed, but I’m also trying to plan more specifics as I get closer to next steps. At the beginning of the new year (Yes, five months away), I’ll be launching a Kickstarter for funding of these books. I want to emphasize that I have the financials to put out the books regardless of the success of that campaign. However, since Brandon Sanderson put his secret project books on Kickstarter, a lot more fantasy and science fiction readers have created accounts there, and it makes that a reasonable marketing platform. My goal is to set a low goal that I know I can reach without having to beg readers or put a bunch of time and money into marketing and then ask try to use word of mouth to build the rest of the funding. The main purpose of this funding is to get better cover art (I have a couple of exceptional cover designers, but the better one is much more expensive), maybe some cool illustrations I can sell to interested parties, and get marketing money, as all my personal funds are going into publishing the best book I can make.

This brings me to ‘how can you all help’?

Well, first off, tell your friends about my book, but you’ve probably already done that. If anyone was on the fence, though, you can tell them that I’m actively writing and updating and I just lowered the kindle price on Amazon by a dollar.Secondly, in January, tell your friends and reader networks about my Kickstarter. If you have money to donate, also, I appreciate it, but honestly, the reader count on the blog is such an inspiration in itself. Time is extremely valuable and there’s no greater compliment than a reader giving me their time.Finally, I’d love any suggestions now on what my readers would like for tier rewards. Obviously appropriate tiers will have copies of the books as they come out, but I have dozens of other ideas (Beta or ARC reader status, digital or print illustrations, hero-forge designs of minis of people from my world, limited naming rights to things in the book, etc.). The useful ones are the ones that sound cool to you all. Let me know, or suggest your own thoughts!

Artifice of Power Update # 12

My draft is past the half way mark! I made my 7k this week as well, which was great, especially since I had a couple more difficult nights. I’m definitely feeling like I’m past the hardest hurdle of the draft and moving at a more steady pace now, focusing on moving the arcs I’ve set up toward their interconnections and resolutions. As much as anything gets resolved in book two of a series that looks like it’s going to be between five and seven books long. But as we all know, some plotlines have to get resolved in here and build out into new arcs for the next book, or this one just feels unsatisfying. Notable updates from this week:

The current word count of the book is 87,475, which is probably a bit longer than I intend. But we’ll have to get to editing to find out, since in the end, the book will be as long as it needs to be for the story it needs to tell. The exciting thing is that amounts to 51.5% of the expected word count. Also, I am definitely within a chapter or two of the next major event, which means my pacing is on track so far.Niamsha bit the bullet and committed to a line action moving forward, which will hopefully make her less of a pain to write. I actually had fun with her chapter this time!Arkaen got himself into some trouble and Kilasha isn’t there to pull him out of it. I’m pretty excited to see where this goes nextSentar politics is definitely getting away from Sayli, though it’s not entirely her fault. Her lower lords are… a bit of a mess.The Flameguard got themselves involved in this mess, too, which is going to throw some new tones on everything

Let’s talk: Romantasy

So lately I’ve been hearing some grumbling that the trend in “romantasy” books being super popular, especially the ones popularized on TikTok, is killing epic fantasy. Some readers of my blog will already know my opinion on this, but I want to talk a little bit about the accusation here. Why? Because I’ve been hearing that epic fantasy is “dying” for most of a decade now, and the responses to that claim always surprise me. They fall into one of three categories:

It’s dying because of external forces, let’s stop it!It’s dying because no one likes it anymore. Just deal with it!It’s not dying, here’s a bunch of counter examples!

I suspect the true answer to the fear that epic fantasy is dying is a combination of all three. Let’s take these one by one.

Save Epic Fantasy from the [Insert Most Relevant Foe Here]!

I’m being a little tongue in cheek with this header, but there’s a good reason. This is a common refrain, and it’s one I have leaned on in the past. See my own blog post about traditional publishing’s word count expectations. But to a large extent, I stand behind that post, not because I think epic fantasy can’t survive the word count restrictions of traditional publishers, but because I think it demonstrates something readers take for granted. Traditional publishing dominates the world of readers.

Now, I’m not saying that no readers anywhere look at self-published books or that self-publishing is not a way to make a living as a writer. Hundreds of indie authors everywhere would disagree. In fact, I would argue that for probably 90% of readers, they don’t actually care if the book they’re reading was traditionally published or not. They only care if the book holds their interest, has characters they care about, and is enjoyable to them. However, if you pick a random reader off the street and ask them to name the last ten books they read, the majority of the books they list will be traditionally published. And this is the problem.

Traditional publishing is going crazy for romantasy right now. This is probably because a lot of those books come with a built-in audience from TikTok and even the ones that don’t are tapping into the always reliable pool of romance readers from a new angle. Traditional publishing is a business, this is making a lot of money at the moment. But epic fantasy is coming off a surge of popularity from TV shows like Game of Thrones and other… less well-received adaptations. That makes the surge in romantasy start to feel like it’s the problem. This new genre is stealing the epic fantasy readers!

But the real problem is that the perceived health of epic fantasy is reliant on the whims of traditional publishing. There’s a lot of great self-published epic fantasy out there, and that’s not slowing down. Voice of War is one I like, Rob J. Hayes is quite popular, and SPFBO has dozens of other great books entered every year, many of them epic fantasy. It’s just harder to find the self-published works.

No One Likes That Anyway!

I just mentioned that epic fantasy is coming off a surge of popularity, and that does actually equate to fewer people wanting to read the genre. The days where everyone was talking about the newest Game of Thrones event are over, and House of the Dragon–which is a show I’m really enjoying–doesn’t have the same reach. I also like the Wheel of Time adaptation, but it has some flaws and it was never going to be as big as Game of Thrones. That time has passed. So yes, to some extent, interest in epic fantasy has waned. But it’s still at least as popular if not more popular now than it was in the 1990s, when a lot of fantasy readers had to defend even liking that stuff. And fantasy was not struggling in the 1990s. That’s what a lot of people think of as the golden age of epic fantasy.

Let’s face facts here. The people who were into Game of Thrones and are now reading romantasy weren’t watching Game of Thrones for the cutting political maneuvers or the shifting house alliances. They were excited by the sex, dragonfire, and murder. There’s nothing wrong with those fans… but they were never there for the epic fantasy. We didn’t lose any of our real audience. We lost the huge increase of “casual” epic fantasy lovers that we gained from a major epic fantasy series being adapted into a TV show with twice the plot pacing… and it still lost a lot of the events and characters from the book.

Despite the loss of these viewers, I still reject the argument I’ve heard from several writer’s groups: readers just don’t have the patience for books that long any more. Well, Sanderson’s fans disagree, as do plenty of other epic fantasy readers. We’re still out here.

It’s Not Dying At All!

So, to some extent, yeah… Self-published epic fantasy is still going strong (we’d love some more attention, though!), Brandon Sanderson is having no problems selling books, Naomi Novik writes some of the best fantasy of this generation and is having no issues, and other new epic fantasy is still coming out from other traditional publishers. But there is a shift, and to deny it entirely is unrealistic.

We did lose a lot of vocal fans when Game of Thrones ended, especially because so many people were angry at the ending, and romantasy has picked up a lot of readers very quickly. Also, epic fantasy authors have always had a harder time in the query trenches because so many publishing houses don’t want to take the risk on a new author writing a five to ten book saga where each book is 200k words or more. And as traditional publishing has gotten harder in general, it’s gotten harder on epic fantasy authors faster than most. If a publishing house is cutting back on expenses, accepting one fewer epic fantasy debut likely equals two to three contemporary fantasy debuts. I’ve also heard people describe what they want from a book, seen them be recommended to multiple epic fantasy series as having the things they’re asking for, and then watched them respond that they don’t want a long book series they have to read all the way through. They just want a broad, expansive world with large stakes, a slow-burn plotline, and well-rounded characters that have moral complexity and strong relationships that develop over time. So…you want an epic fantasy, but the ones that exist are too long? You might have a problem.

Still… Calm down, guys. Romantasy is just a genre trend. Epic fantasy readers are still out there, and if they aren’t reading what you’re releasing, maybe you just haven’t found the right market for your books. “Epic fantasy” is pretty broad, and someone who loves Wheel of Time won’t necessarily love A Song of Ice and Fire, and maybe neither will enjoy Stormlight. But those all have devoted fans. You just need to find yours.