Big update today about Book #8 in the Corrosive Knights series…

So last week, September 11th, I offered an update and here we are, only three days later and things have moved along quite a bit.

To begin with, I’ve finished the read-through/pen & ink revisions of Draft #8 of Book #8 in the Corrosive Knights series.

Yay!

Further, this morning I began to pass those revisions into the novel’s Word file and, in what amounted to perhaps a little over 1 hour of work before I had to leave, I nonetheless managed to get roughly 1/4th of the revisions done…!

Whoa!

What this means is not that I’ve suddenly become a revision speed demon but rather that those pages required so little work that I could move through them as fast as I did.

Thing is, the rest of the novel is looking very similar and most pages -though not all- require only light revision and not much more. Even the ones that require a little bit more revision, I feel, don’t require all that much to be fine and certainly no where near the amount needed in previous drafts.

So, in other words, its looking like once I’m done putting all this stuff into the Word file, the book should for all intents and purposes be done… and its looking like I can do this by perhaps Wednesday or, if I somehow don’t find the time, by Thursday at the latest.

This morning I also got in touch with the company that has handled the Corrosive Knights covers and initiated the process of hiring them to get the cover to this book done. In general they take between a week and 14 days to deliver such things so, hopefully, we’re looking at having the entire book done, at the very latest, by the end of next week.

Which means that as soon as I have all this stuff together, I’m going to release the book…!

Because I’m so very close now, I’ll leave any future updates for the time when I get the cover and can reveal it, along with (obviously) the book’s title.

Hang in there folks, we’re about to debut Book #8!

Last week Tuesday (you can read it here) I posted an entry noting that I was done with the 6th Draft of Book #8 in the Corrosive Knights series…

At that time, I was feeling wonderfully optimistic about how things were going with Book #8, and that further the fact that it took me a grand total of two weeks to go from reading/pen & ink revision to putting those revisions into the book’s Word file suggested I was winding down things pretty quickly.

Welp, it seems like that is indeed the case.

Last week Thursday, the 3rd, I started the process of reading/pen & ink revision of the book. I worked on it that day, Friday, skipped Saturday (a whole bunch of crap was going on and I simply didn’t have the time), worked on Sunday, and this morning I spent a little less than two hours to finish up that part of the revision process.

So, in sum, its taken me roughly 3 days and a few hours to read through the book and do those pen & ink revisions, which means starting either today but more likely tomorrow I’ll sit before the computer and begin to put those revisions into the Word file.

The process should be pretty quick. The first 50 some pages of the book (when printed out on 8 1/2 x 11 paper and at 10 point size, single spaced, it runs 197 pages long, so we’re talking the first 1/4th of the book) came out wonderfully well. I had very little to clean up on them.

As for the rest of the book, I’d say there are no more than 20 pages which require some deeper “cleaning up”. I found a couple of instances of the dreaded “I’m repeating myself” issue which almost always seems to pop up, but overall the book is incredibly close to being all ready.

I’m guessing putting the revisions in the Word file will take me no more than the remainder of this week, provided I have the time and won’t find myself forced to do other things.

So that means that, theoretically, by Friday the 11th of September I should be on my way to doing what will likely be the last revision of this book, Draft #8.

And it it takes me even less time than Draft #7 did, I should have the book completed before the end of the month.

Whoa.

When I was working on past books in the series, I noted that Book #8 was originally slated to be an “Epilogue” to the Corrosive Knights story and that, further, I had already written that Epilogue. I noted many times before that I still intend to use it, but that it is rather short (only some 20,000 words long versus my usual novels which go 85,000-110,000 words) and while trying to clean it up, I stumbled into this new story which is the one I’m presenting in Book #8.

When I was getting to the final pages of this draft, a curious realization came to me. I was effectively offering another, alternate Epilogue story to the Corrosive Knights series.

I suppose that was bound to happen, given Book #7, Legacy of the Argus, wraps up so many plot threads.

Yet it was a startling realization, especially given the fact that I’m so near the end of the book’s creation and its release.

I’ll also note, in concluding, that I remain totally blown away by this story. It’s really good, IMHO, and sits proudly among the other works.

The big question remains: When will the book be released?

I’m shooting for the end of September/very beginning of October at this point.

So, yes folks, this book will be available in not all that much more than 3-4 weeks or so time.

Soon, my friends. Very, very soon.

On August 8th, two weeks and two days ago, I posted my last update regarding Book #8 in the Corrosive Knights series…

This morning I finished the read through/pen & ink revision of Draft #6 of the book and, starting tomorrow, should begin transferring all those corrections to my Word file of the novel.

I’m thrilled with how things went!

While it has been a couple of weeks, the reality is that I spent the first week following printing out Draft #6 doing other stuff and simply didn’t find the time to get to it. While frustrating not being able to get to it, it proved a blessing in disguise as it allowed me to empty my head of any thoughts on the book and, when I got back to it last week Monday, I was fresh and rarin’ to go.

In one week time, a very short time indeed, I finished the read-through of the book and the revisions, as noted above, and I suspect it’ll take me no more than 1-2 weeks at the very latest to get the revisions on the computer and print things out and get to Draft #7.

As I mentioned when I was getting into Draft #6, I felt there were maybe 2-3 more Drafts to do before the book is ready. Now, as I’m on the cusp of entering Draft #7, I feel there’s 1-2 Drafts to go after this.

Most likely it’ll be two more Drafts which means Draft #8 will potentially be the last one I need.

The book is, if I do say so myself -and I believe I have already- terrific in my eyes and a wonderful addition to the Corrosive Knights series.

I really, really can’t wait to get it out there to everyone!

Soon, my friends. Very soon!

Seconds ago I finished putting the pen and ink revisions into the Word file. Thus, Draft #5 of Book #8 in the Corrosive Knights series is finished!

I started this draft on 6/22/20, so it’s been some month and about a half that it took me to do this draft, minus the slightly more than a week I was off flying.

Not bad!

When I get to the point where I’m finishing off drafts in a month’s time -and I strongly suspect Draft #6 will take no more than a month- then we’re damn near the end.

Honestly, though, I thought I’d finish this draft yesterday, Sunday the 9th.

It didn’t happen because when I finished a section close to the end of the novel on Friday, I felt there needed to be more work done on it. These pages, which amounted to some 13 or so, were critical for understanding what was going on and, frankly, I felt they needed more work.

Rather than continue and get back to those pages with the full Draft #6, I printed them out and on Saturday read through them, pen and ink revised them, then jumped on the computer and essentially completed a Draft #5B on those pages.

I think I cleaned them up well, but it was a day spent going over something again rather than moving ahead and finishing up. Between Sunday and Monday (today), I did just that.

We’re getting there, folks.

Let’s see how long it takes me to do Draft #6, shall we?

Actually, consider it a mini-update.

I’ve been rather busy the last few days with various things that needed to be done and the rest of this week looks like it might be busy as well on things other than my reading/revision of Book #8 in the Corrosive Knights series.

These are the types of bumps in the road that piss me off, frankly, when working on my novels but they always seem to come and they always seem to show up on the worst possible times.

Writing a novel is often an exercise in persistence. Just coming up with a decent first draft takes a hell of a lot of energy and patience on my part but then come the multiple revisions which are -again for me- absolutely indispensable to getting one’s novel ready for release.

Right now I’m reading and revising the latest draft, #5, and I’m roughly a quarter of the way through reading it and almost a quarter of the way through putting those revisions on the computer. Because I knew my time might be limited and because the novel has three distinct opening sections before getting into the meat of the story (not really much of a spoiler, but there you have a bit!), I read and then cleaned up the first two segments on the computer and finished reading and putting in the pen and ink revisions on that third segment but have yet to transfer those revisions to the computer.

Its worth noting there was a lot to fix up in the second segment and it is done, both pen and ink and computer transfer, at this point. The third segment required some work but not a whole lot and so far the “meat” of the story is going along pretty easily.

I don’t know if that will remain the case. In fact, I suspect toward the climax/end of the book there will be some things that will require my attention, but at least so far I’m pretty pleased that despite the things that are robbing me of my time, the revision is proceeding well and I feel that the novel should be ready pretty soon.

Let’s keep those fingers crossed!

First: I haven’t been posting as much as usual of late and I do apologize for that.

The reason is pretty simple: I’ve been laser focused on Draft #4 of Book #8 in the Corrosive Knights series…

Today -just a couple of hours ago, in fact!- I finished putting the last of the corrections into the novel’s Word file and will print the whole think out this evening and very shortly start up Draft #5.

Draft #4, as I look back on it now, was a watershed revision. What I mean by that is that this Draft felt like a very in depth, top-to-bottom revision which caught most of the important elements I needed to address in the book and fixed them. Hopefully, in completing this Draft, and until I get my fingers more into Draft #5, I feel like I’m very close to the point where I can focus entirely on how the story is told versus what I’m telling, and whether all the creative elements are in their proper place.

Looking back a little further, I regret my decision to do Draft #3 completely on the computer rather than as I usually do it, ie printing it out, reading the print out, and adding the voluminous corrections by pen on the pages themselves before going to the computer and putting those corrections in.

Which is, of course, what I did with Draft #4.

Mind you, I’m not saying the way I did Draft #3 was a total waste of time -it most certainly was not!- but given how early in the drafting process I was, I mistakenly felt I had advanced much further than I was. Therefore the corrections made for Draft #3, while they certainly moved the proverbial ball forward, in retrospect feel like they were pretty minor compared to the near total overhaul I did with Draft #4.

What pleases me the most now that I’ve finished Draft #4 is that the story elements are by and large where I think they need to be. There might still be some additions I’ll make -there often are!- but truthfully it feels like this book is very close to being done.

I’ve mentioned it before and I’ll repeat it again: For the last few novels and for whatever reason it has taken me 12 Drafts -not 11 and not 13- to get my novels to where I’m comfortable releasing them.

Not so with this book.

I believe when I’m done with Draft #5 I’ll be very close to the end. I will very likely need to do a Draft #6 but, after that, I can see myself finishing this off with either the 7th or 8th Draft.

This time around I either got really lucky and hit upon the plot quickly or I’m growing as a writer and don’t need to spend as much time in the earlier stages getting the book’s plot settled.

Regardless, I still feel like this is a book I can finish by the end of Summer or, unless some other problems arise, early in Fall.

I’m incredibly proud of this book and think it’s a wonderful addition to the Corrosive Knights series. I know Book #7, Legacy of the Argus, was presented as a conclusion to the major Corrosive Knights series and it remains so… but this new book, while not necessarily opening a whole new story line in this universe, adds an intriguing new piece.

I can’t wait to release it!