Been a while since my last update (which was posted just a little over a month ago, on 2/27/18) on my latest novel, #7, in the Corrosive Knights series.

As I mentioned before and as is pointed out in the graphic above, Book #7 in this series presents a conclusion to the main story line, though there will be a Book #8 (I’ve already written the full first draft of it) that presents an Epilogue to the story.

So a month ago I wrote how I was done with the 4th draft of this novel.  It was a big event, given that with this completed draft I had most of the elements of the story in place and felt that future drafts would tilt more and more toward grammatical/stylistic/spelling revision rather than adding new story elements.

Welp, in the month that followed I finished reading this latest draft and adding a cornucopia of notes, revisions, and deletions.  There will be some stuff I need to work on harder than others.  Toward the middle of the book there is a part that needs work and likely some new passages/pages.  Similarly, the book’s climax and conclusion also needs more work.

However, the rest of the book proved essentially what I thought: Needing work on a grammatical/spelling/presentation level.  This includes, obviously, making passages clearer and more precise, perhaps eliminating some repetition.  Streamlining and making sure the reader will have a smooth, clear work to follow.

As opposed to the 4th draft, it took me, despite plenty of other things robbing me of time, three weeks or so to re-read and provide written notes on the work, compared to taking something like 2-3 months to read through and make notes on the 3rd draft!

As of a few days ago, I’m hard at work on the computer putting all those notations into the new draft.  Once again and in comparison to the previous draft, this is so far moving quite smoothly.  In two days I worked through 41 pages of the 288 and hope to keep a similar pace up to the end.  Of course, things will slow down when I get to that middle section and climax, as these will require more work.

Regardless, things are so far moving very smoothly and I feel like this novel, at this stage, is farther along -and therefore closer to being “done”- than were all my other books at a similar point in time.

I’ve noted before that for most of my novels it takes something like 12 (!) drafts to feel a book is indeed “finished”.  Considering how far along I feel this book is at this point in time, I suspect it won’t take me quite that many drafts before declaring the book done.

Anyway, back to work!

This is one hell of an exciting day.

After far too long, I’ve finally, FINALLY finished up the fourth draft of Book #7 in the Corrosive Knights series.

This is a very big thing and a huge step forward.

The first three drafts of the book were far from complete, missing as they were a lot of elements which I was putting in with each subsequent draft.

With Draft #4, I had almost everything put down and almost everything that was left, I hoped, I’d be putting in this draft.  While there still remain a few missing elements, they’re minor compared to the big chunks of material added in this draft.

What does this all mean?

I’ve mentioned this before, that there are several stages to writing a book, at least for me.  First I have a concept and, often times, I have a strong beginning and end envisioned and I have to then work out the middle sections, connecting everything together in a way that makes sense and, hopefully, is original and entertaining.

In the case of Book #7, there was the added work involved in wrapping up all the various plot threads into this conclusion.

At certain points I feared the book would prove too long and that I’d have to break it in two.  I realized, much to my relief, that I could finish the book without breaking it apart.  Nonetheless, the book now runs to 147,148 words over 288 single spaced pages.  This is easily the longest of any of my novels, which often ran around 110,000 words, give or take.

So, what’s next?

I’ll print this behemoth out and its on to draft #5.  Here’s the thing: I’m now moving from creating new scenarios and scenes and going into revision.  At this stage, I’ll be looking into the writing itself and making sure the grammar/spelling is good.  I’ll also be streamlining any things that need to be streamlined while expanding whatever requires it.

The beauty of this is drafts will be completed far more quickly now that I won’t be as focused on creation of new material.

The big question: When will the book be ready?

While its impossible to offer a solid release date, suffice it to say today’s completion of Draft #4 brings me a HUGE step closer to getting the whole thing done.  I’ve long felt this book could be ready later this year and, so far, there’s no reason to change that (admittedly vague) prediction.

Regardless, I’m moving along so for those who are waiting, have just a little more patience… Book #7 will be here before you know it!

Incredibly, its been one day over a month since my last update on book #7 of the Corrosive Knights series.

While I wish I could say I’m done with the latest draft, I’m not quite there yet.

However, I’m offering this update because last week I made it through almost everything and have only the conclusion of the book to revise before heading into the next draft.

Seems like not much of an update, no?

Actually, it is a big deal.

I don’t want to get into details as they would be nothing more than SPOILERS for a novel that I haven’t even hinted at what occurs in it, but before the conclusion there was a scene that I’d been thinking and worrying about for a very long time as to how effective it is.

I wrote the first draft of that scene a while back, did some minor revision, but now, as I’m on my current revision, I’m doing a top to bottom look and trying my best to make this one of the last drafts I do to focus on the plot and make sure all story elements are in place.  My hope is that when I’m done with the current draft, I’ll move from actual writing to mostly revision of grammatical/spelling issues rather than deal with the story proper… not an easy thing to do with all the plot threads I’m dealing with while hoping to conclude what is the finale of a seven book series that spans tens of thousands of years.

In this book, this one sequence is a linchpin, a point that required considerable buildup and, once presented, needed to have a maximum impact.

As it turned out, there was a character I created for this book in the early going that slowly, with each new iteration/revision, was relegated to erasure.  Though I had forgotten, this individual had, as it turned out, one final fairly big scene before the even bigger scene I was all worried about getting right and I completely forgot it was there.

At least until I arrived at that point in my revision.

That poor character’s scene, like the others, was destined to be removed but I realized much of the dialogue worked… just not with that character.  There was another character in the novel I wanted to expand on and suddenly all things fell beautifully into place.  I removed the character that I created for the book, inserted the one I wanted to have a bigger role, did some minor dialogue modifications, and… VOILA!… the scene worked, beautifully, and was an excellent primer/intro to the following, big scene that I needed to have work.

The “new” intro scene with the different character, as it turned out, did everything I needed to get us to that pivotal scene that followed and one strengthened the other.

Even better, the pivotal scene played out beautifully and I found myself not needing to do too terribly much in terms of revising it.

I know, I know, I’m being very cryptic here and anyone reading this has no freaking idea how important and exciting these two scenes worked for me.

Understand: Writing a book, as I’ve stated many times before, is work.

Hard work.

Over a long period of time (in my case a book takes between 1-2 years to complete) you incrementally create your story while revising and reworking scenes, sometimes re-arranging them like a weird jigsaw puzzle, until you take all those words and chapters and turn them into something that flows and, if you’ve done your work well, the result is something that really works.

Triumphs, at least for me, are often found in small things: A great phrase here, a great description there, a clever callback, a clever metaphor.  It isn’t until you’ve finished the final draft and are happy with what you’ve done that you finally feel a great sense of accomplishment and, hopefully, success.

It isn’t often when a sequence that’s been worrying you for a very long time seems to work almost like magic.  It’s even rarer that you realize with not too many changes two scenes work together to create this magic, and its especially delirious to feel this toward the conclusion of your book, when you want audiences to feel that same emotion.

That beautiful, wonderful feeling took me through Friday and gave me hope that what was left in the book’s conclusion would run fairly smoothly.

Today, that beautiful excitement is gone as I buckle down and revise the book’s end.

…then its on to the next draft! 😉

We’re into the new year and I fully expect to have the latest book in the Corrosive Knights series, book #7, be released…

As you can see from the above, Book #7 is the conclusion to the series.  By that I mean the main story I’ve been working on for 6 books comes to its end with Book #7.

This book looks like it will be my longest, wordcount-wise, to date and I’m currently 2/3rds of the way through the latest draft.  This draft, I’m hoping, will be the one where I get all the main details down and from that point on future drafts will hopefully involve cleaning up/streamlining the story for maximum effect.

As you can also see from the graphic above, following this book there will be a Book #8, which I call an “Epilogue”.  This book will come out very soon after Book #7’s release.

Very soon after.

Why?

Those who have been around here for a while know why.  It’s because I already have Book #8 written out, at least the first full draft, and what’s left to do is review it, clean up/streamline it, and it’ll be ready.  I don’t anticipate that taking much more than a few months.

Will both books be released in 2018?

I can’t promise that as it depends entirely on the work I have to do with Book #7.  The quicker I get that book out, the quicker I get to #8.

We’ll see…

We’re nearing the middle of November so why not give an update on Book #7 of my Corrosive Knights series?  And, while I’m at it, let me again post this nifty graphic showing the entirety of the series and the two books to come…

Alright, so here goes:

I’m still hard at work on revising the first full draft of the book.  The book has three parts which are roughly the same length:

1. An intro which offers us a “the story until now” in as interesting/new a way as I can fashion it which leads to…
2. The bulk of the story which leads to…
3. Conclusion

I’ve finished going over that first part and I have to say, I really think it worked well.  There are parts presented which offer scenes found in earlier books but offered from different perspectives and, IMHO, it works so damn well!

I wish I could get into more details but to do so would be silly.  Today I embark on the second part of the story and, hopefully, soon enough I’ll have made my way through the entire book…

…at which time I begin all over again but with a hopefully far stronger overall work.

Exciting, exciting stuff!

Yesterday I posted an update of my latest Corrosive Knights book (you can read the full update here).  As I mentioned there, I’m now revising the first “full” draft of book #7 in the series, which will conclude the series’ main story.

Toward the end of the post, I created and put up this picture:I didn’t think all that much of it when I created and posted it in the still in-progress blog entry, but when I published the entry and looked back at the whole thing I got…

…emotional.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t tear up or cry or howl at the moon or give myself high fives.  Instead, seeing the published entry, I did have feelings.

Pleasant feelings.

The first, primary feeling was one of pride.  The second was one of relief.

The pride part is easy enough to explain.  Whatever job you have, and especially if it is one you enjoy, whenever you accomplish something “big” after plenty of hard work doing it and are happy with the way things turned out, then you should feel pride.  You should feel like patting your back.

I’ve noted far too many times before that writing a book is extremely difficult work, at least to me.  The amount of time spent on a single novel, much less eight novels that form a series, is very hard.  There are many characters and situations to keep in mind.  There are so many events and repercussions to deal with.  Finally, I was determined to deliver something fresh and new and interesting and was extremely careful not to have any story devolve into cliche.

So when I looked at yesterday’s post and saw that image, all that hard work was right there in that single graphic.

Sure, books #7 and 8 aren’t out yet, but at this time both novels are written.  The only thing keeping me from releasing them is the work needed to clean them up so they can be released.

Otherwise, this series -at least from the creative writing side- is done and, to my mind, done well.

That’s where the feeling of relief comes in.

After all these years -indeed much of my adult life- as of yesterday the process is almost done and, most importantly, it works.

After so many small and large steps, so many days and months and years of hard work, of whole days and weeks spent working on one particular segment of one particular book and sweating out how that would mesh with other parts of said book…

…I’m suddenly here, nearing the end of this long, wonderful journey.

As I said before, it has not been easy, but there’s nothing better than seeing the fruits of your labor and realizing you’re not just nearly done, but that you’ve done well.

I can’t wait for you guys and gals to see the next two books.

If you liked what came before, you will love what comes next.

Though the update is listed as today (ie, the 25th of October), this concerns yesterday.

Specifically, as of yesterday, the 24th of October, I finished the first detailed read through of my latest Corrosive Knights novel.  This will be novel #7 in the series and will conclude the story I began all those years before with Mechanic.

(A quick side note: Though this will conclude the main Corrosive Knights story line, there will be a book #8 which will offer an “epilogue” to the story.  For now I’ll say no more, other than that I have already written the first draft of that epilogue and it should come out very soon after the release of book #7)

Having now read through book #7 from start to end, I have a clearer idea of how the individual parts fit together.  When I wrote this book, I first wrote one major section and the conclusion then went back to write the second major section, a process that took me some time, before marrying the two elements together in one large file.

As I have mentioned before, this is the longest novel I’ve written so far, clocking in at 128,761 words (261 single spaced printed pages) and I suspect when all is said and done the word could will likely increase.

There are bits and pieces that need clarification and/or expansion.  There are less pieces here and there that require compression.

But the big question is: Does the book work?

It may seem like an odd question to make at such a late stage, but trust me, I was sweating for a while.  Because I did one large section of the book, put it away, then worked on the other section before merging the two, it had been a while since I read and revised the first stuff I did.  And when I merged the two together and started the full read-through, I was nervous, worried if everything would fit together and whether the story in full came together or, as I put it above, worked.

I’m happy to say it did.

Boy, did it ever.

Though there’s still much to be done, I’m extremely happy with what I have so far.  This is a book that will, I believe, very satisfactorily conclude the Corrosive Knights saga.  Those who have been following it, I feel, will be happy with this ending which deals with all the various plot threads I’ve opened but, up to this point, haven’t closed.

So today I start the revision process on the computer and, when I’m done with it, I’ll print the whole thing out and give it another read and do the pen revisions before once again doing revisions on the computer.

Hang in there, folks.

They’ll all be out before you know it!

Quick update:

I’m slowly… very slowly… reading through the current draft of the book and…

I’m liking what I’m reading.

To be sure, there are some things that will need expansion and/or “cleaning” but much of what I’ve read (approximately the first 1/3rd or so of the book) flows remarkably well.

While I know what happens in these early pages, its been many months since I’ve looked at them so, therefore, I’m looking at them with fresh eyes and the fact that the stuff reads as well as it does is very promising.

I suppose when you’ve made it to your 11th major work, even if you’re a fool like me you’re bound to learn a few tricks along the way.  Either that or I’ve finally learned to write things with a stronger eye on making it closer to what it should be by the time I’m through.

Anyway, back to work.

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!