Update: Finished, Whew!

Recent Reading: The Good Guy by Dean ... Fun with Punctuation

Update: Finished, Whew!

I think I’m closing in on substantive revisions. Over the next day or so, I will fiddle with this and that, but I really think and hope I’m mostly through revising big stuff and therefore it will all truly be fiddly from here on.

I’m not at all sure I will be through the proofing process by the middle of the month — that seems unlikely, sigh — so the release date on my Patreon will probably be at the end of the month, with the release on Amazon set for the middle of July (which I do not like, because there are reasons it’s better to release a new book at the beginning of a month) OR at the beginning of August (which I do not like because, I mean, August is a long way away.)

This uncertainty means I’m hesitating about picking a preorder date for Amazon. By the end of this week, I will bite that bullet and choose a release date and set up the preorder. If I don’t release the whole book at my Patreon by June 17, then I’ll keep going with a chapter a week for a couple more weeks, with the expectation that I’ll be releasing the whole book there by the end of the month.

Meanwhile, just in case any of you wondered, yes, comments from early readers are important, and I rewrote one of the late chapters almost completely. I was having trouble seeing what the problems were there, and this is a big, big thing comments do — not just tell me, “Something seems unclear” but tell me, “Here is exactly what is unclear.” Thus, I hope everything is now clear.

Naturally revision added length, as is typical, and the book is now 230,000 words, which is annoying, and I would absolutely cut it in half and thus justify taking six months to write it, except I REALLY do not want to do that. Therefore, Part I: the journey through the winter country and a lot of relationship stuff. Part II: the starlit country and much more plot stuff. And relationship stuff keeps happening, yes, but there are more exciting events.

I would bet that various readers prefer one part over the other, depending on how important the relationships are to them compared to seeing new lands, meeting new people, and encountering problems. As a relationship reader (and writer), I really enjoyed Part I, though now that I’m through revision, I’m also pretty satisfied with Part II and like the ending a lot better.

The NEXT book will be MUCH easier, as fairly soon I will do stuff to cut the cast of characters down A LOT MORE and then everything will become far easier.

Everyone is also going to want to know the following:

What was happening in the winter country that caused this big thing to happen in the starlit lands?

And the answer is, I don’t know, but a great idea has occurred to me, plus I hope an associated idea, and therefore I suspect we will find that out. This would be Book 11 of the Tuyo series, which I hope will be a lot shorter and MUCH MUCH faster to write, and which will take place concurrently with Hedesa. That’s not a guarantee, but I think this is VERY likely because, I mean, we honestly do need to know what the heck was happening in the winter country while the events in Hedesa were unrolling. It’s a real mystery!

So I think we’ll see a shorter side-novel in the Tuyo world before we pick up where Hedesa leaves off. That’s my best guess right now.

Meanwhile, cute picture of no-longer-tiny Tiny Boy Four, aka Piolo, who will be with me for another couple of weeks before his people return. He clung to this little hedgehog toy for approximately 25 minutes before he let it go.