Just a few days ago I wrote up a mini-update on my latest Corrosive Knights series.
I began the Corrosive Knights many years ago with Mechanic…
…and I worried that book #7 in this series, the concluding story, would be so big it needed to be broken into two novels.
Well, as I stated in that update I wrote a few days back, I was getting all the stuff I was hoping to do and it was looking even better that I’d have the story done in one larger novel.
Saturday, being alone for most of the day, I sat before the computer and began what, it turned out to be, the finishing touch on those elements I worried might lead to splitting the novel in two.
In effect, I finished what I need to finish and, later that day (or was it Sunday?) I cut and pasted the material into one large file and today, Monday, I printed the whole damn thing…
And there it is, lying –very heavily- on my desk.
The total page count for what is essentially a first full/complete draft of the story came to 261 single spaced pages (I print on both sides to preserve paper) and a total word count of 128,761. These numbers easily represent the largest word/page count for any early draft of my novels… and I’m quite sure that count will go up as I begin the reviewing process. I know there are some things -mostly smaller things at this point- here and there I still have to add in.
The most exciting thing is that that’s where I am: In the reviewing process. There are still some things that need to be worked out and bits and pieces which will either be added or removed, but this draft has almost everything I wanted to touch upon in this novel from start to end.
So the process goes on and I’ll spend most of this week -and likely some of next!- reading and revising this draft and marking it up like crazy. Then, off to the computer to put in all the revisions, print it out, and go through the same process of refining the novel until I feel it is ready to be released.
In general, I’ve taken roughly 12 drafts to get to that point.
My hope is that it will happen soon!