This Week in the Study

Well, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Life on the publishing side has been, shall we say, stimulating of late. Blogging and house-cleaning are the first things out the window when my schedule gets overfull.  You can imagine how ashamed my mother must be.

Be that as it may–

Those of you who follow the play-by-play over on Facebook know I blew my editorial deadline for The Heart of Darkness in spectacular fashion. The book should have been off my desk and on Anna‘s months ago. And meanwhile I have promised to launch it, the associated Fortunes deck and book, as well as the Fortunes electronic game, at ConCarolinas next year. Which means it’s got to go to press in May of next year, hence to the reviewing world by February. So I am in crunch mode.

The Heart of Darkness picks up where The Shadow of the Sun left off. Really. About an hour later. This time, rather than just following Ellion through the chaos, I’ve had to bring in other points of view in order to tell the story:

Leahy, the Bard of Arcadia–a name readers of the first volume may remember, even though they haven’t met the character yet

Letitia*, would-be Mora of Fíana, the focus of the conflict between Ellion and his nemesis

Iminor, her appointed consort

As you may imagine, that’s a lot of story. At present the novel stands at just less than 179,000 words. I presently estimate a finished length of ~225,000.

My goal is to finish this month. That will give my beta readers–and Anna!–a bit of room to maneuver. So I’m trying to write 2K words each day.

Stay tuned.

*I swore I’d never write Letitia as a PoV. Didn’t want to do it. And then it became necessary. She’s turning out to be more interesting than I anticipated.