First Draft of Volume IV is complete!
Last night I completed the epilogue of Volume IV. At one hundred and seven thousand words it is roughly the same length as Rise of Shadows. Because I use an iterative writing process this is pretty close to what the final draft length will be.
Next phase will be the pre-editing phase where my wife and I go over the book and clean up the worst of the errors. That will probably take at least a month more. Once that is complete, we will send the manuscript to our editor and she will beat it up without any mercy. While this is all going on, our cover artist will be working on the cover.
This all means that I am expecting probably a January or February release at this point. I had hoped to make it for Christmas, but it just does not look possible now, especially given the upcoming holidays.
Volume IV, as mentioned previously, ties up all the major loose ends dating back to Enemy of an Enemy. It will not close off every loose end. Some of the loose ends I am planning stories around to write at a later date. The rest I plan to leave to the reader’s imagination. I do not want to spoil much about the book, but I will say that Spectra and Dusty play a major role in it, and Grandmaster Vydor makes a return! Even Craig has a very brief cameo. It truly is an all-star cast, in my own mind.
Volume IV is the conclusion of what I am calling the first quartet in the series. Volume V, which I have already started writing, will take place in the same universe as the first four, but will start new story arcs, and introduce new characters. The Lost Tales universe is far more massive then I think has been obvious so far. I am fifteen thousand words into Volume V and it takes place in an entirely different part of Vydoria that has not yet been explored in any book, not even my unpublished ones. It has been fun to write so far, partly because in Volume V for the first time ever the main character is a zalionian!
If history repeats itself the first place to put Volume IV up for sale will be Smashwords, With 24 hours of them posting it, Amazon will likely have it. The rest of the stores can take up to a month or more, but I will do what I can to kick them around a bit. I will have more updates as things develop on this front. Keep watch on this web site, @LostTales on Twitter for the latest news!
