Epic Fantasy is a bit different animal than what I’ve written before, and maybe that’s why the current book is slowing growing into a beast. The current main book I’m working on (interspersed with working on Book three of The Echo Worlds.) is now called “Blood of a Fallen God.” It’s an idea that’s morphed and changed a bit from my initial thoughts, when it was going to be called Forgemaster.
I actually have an old post about that name, as I was going to write this a while back. However I hit writers block, and wasn’t sure where I wanted to take the story, so as with other things, it got shelved for a time. But now it’s back, but changed. I’ve only used a tiny bit of what I wrote before so far, I may incorporate other parts later I’m not sure. But the main thrust is somewhat the same. I think that one of the reasons Epic Fantasy is a bit of a bear in terms of length is the world building. Even in the Echo World series, I’m building an ‘add-on’ to our world, not creating a whole new thing. I’m finding that giving background without throwing a huge multiple page explanation of what is what and why it’s there to be a different sort of challenge. I’m enjoying it, but trying to figure out how to explain what the Mistlands are, who Amder is, who Valnijz is, all of that and doing it by weaving it in and out of the dialogue and action to be mentally taxing at times.
As a result, this thing is being a beast. It’s looking like the first draft will be in the 150-165 thousand words range. Which is by far larger than what I’ve done in the past. I’m sure edits will change those numbers, but still, it’s a beast. The current target is to have the first draft of this done by the end of March, and the first draft of book three of the series done by the end of April. I’m actually shooting to get three books out this year, which is doable, though editing this thing is going to kill me.
To help with all this I’ve finally started doing ‘writing sprints’ Free flow writing for a set amount of time twice a day. I always resisted doing do for reasons I’m not clear on now, and I’ve found it very helpful with getting things down on the paper. It’s also helped me not do the ‘editing while writing’ habit I was finding myself falling into. If for that reason alone I’m happy with the new method (for me.) of getting it done.
I’ve got some good cover ideas for this book (Blood of a Fallen God, aka BOAFG.) but not sure how to realize them yet. But since I don’t even have the first draft done yet, I’m ok with not knowing. Sales have still been stinky on the books that are out there, they fell off in September and have yet to recover. I’ve tried various things to tweak them, but nothing doing. The dream of course is that this book gets selected for Kindle Scout, get’s published by Amazon’s fantasy imprint, and ALL the books start selling better. That’s the dream at least. All I can do is try to create the best stories I can, and get them out there.
