Category Archive for ‘progress’
2016 in Review
Posted on December 31st, 2016 in film and tv, games, news, opinion, progress, whisky deathmatch
New Year’s Eve, people, and you know what that means. Yes, indeed, I am 42 years old today. Can it really be a year since I reviewed last year? Apparently it can.
2016, then. Bloody hell. It’s been quite the year for deaths and political upheavals. The blog continues to be in a fairly moribund state – indeed this is my first post in, what, four months or more? Sad! Still, I’ve been doing this a while now, and I think it’s better that I use it when I’ve got something substantial to announce or discuss than just trying to dream up content to fill the space. So posting will continue to be light around here, I shouldn’t wonder. Probably you’d all rather have more fiction anyway, if given the choice…
A YEAR IN BOOKSELLING – With the publication of my collection of Short Stories, Sharp Ends, I now have ten books in print, would you believe. The Blade Itself came out in May 2006, so it’s rather neatly ten books in ten years, although the distribution’s been pretty lumpy and, since I actually started writing The Blade Itself in 2001, if I remember correctly, I haven’t actually written anywhere near as fast as a book a year. Sharp Ends made I think number 8 on the Times Hardcover list, which is a pretty strong showing for short stories, and everything else continues to tick over nicely. Georgia was the first new translation deal in a while, making somewhere between 25 and 30 total. After an awful lot of travelling last year I’ve toured a fair bit less, though I was out and about in the UK for Sharp Ends and visited Spain and the US a couple of times.
A YEAR IN BOOK WRITING – Another slightly piecemeal year interrupted by some side projects and bits and pieces, but I got going in earnest on the new book in the second half and I’m now not far off a reasonable first draft. In case anyone’s unaware what the current project is, I’m working on another trilogy in the First Law world, taking place about fifteen years after Red Country, but my ideal plan is to draft the whole trilogy before publishing the first book, so I can see exactly what I’ve got and where I’m going before going back to revise and fine-tune that first book. There are good reasons why they say the start of a book should be the last thing you write, and I think ideally that applies to series too, where the realities of publishing make it a possibility. The advantage is hopefully a more coherent and polished series plus a rapid and well-planned publication schedule, the disadvantage is a long wait for the first book. I can’t really see a scenario in which you get a new book from me before the end of 2018, and maybe later. But we’ll see…
TV and FILM – We live in a golden age of TV, no doubt. There’s just a steady splurge of quality, boundary-pushing stuff coming out of Netflix, which for me this year has included Narcos, Stranger Things, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Better Call Saul, Bloodline, Daredevil, Luke Cage, among others. Game of Thrones had in some respects its best series yet – certainly the most exciting and pay-off heavy, though for me I thought you could tell in the details that they’d run out of book to draw on. Enjoyed the first season of The Expanse a lot – just the right mix of the familiar and the original. Amazon’s Man in the High Castle was a triumph of setting and design but the jury’s still somewhat out on whether they can knit a convincing narrative out of it. Black Sails continued to deliver in its third season. Gotham season two was a little patchy, but strong at its best and for me still the pick of the recent crop of superhero stuff – it’s dark enough but still has a cartoony, comic-book sensibility. Second season of Italian crime drama Gomorrah was as brilliant as the first – hugely recommended. I even watched a couple of things on olde-style terrestrial TV. I must admit The Night Manager underwhelmed me a bit – it was good, but it failed to ever really catch fire. Planet Earth II was just astonishing, though. I was blown away by David Attenborough’s natural history as a kid and I’m still watching it now with my kids. Superb film-making on every level.
Cinema continues to be a much more minor interest, really. I probably go to the cinema more to watch kids films than adult ones. I always love a western, but The Revenant I found a little disappointing – beautiful but uninvoving. The Hateful Eight I quite liked but maybe because I was expecting less. For me Tarantino’s best since Pulp Fiction but then that’s not a high bar. Indeed Hateful Eight and the Revenant had about the right amount of dialogue for two films but just very badly distributed between them… You had to love Deadpool, so boldly and cleverly put together around a great central performance, and the time was just right for an irreverent adult take on the superhero movie, not that the Marvel steamroller looks like stopping anytime soon. Rogue One was good, not without issues and patchiness, but good, though digital Peter Cushing seemed to prove that live actors have a bright future for some time to come. Arrival touched the numinous at times but in the end offered up one of those mysteries that’s a lot less exciting once it’s solved. Which leaves La La Land as my film of the year by some margin – an original and brilliantly made musical which managed to be joyful and intimate without being soft-centred.
GAMES – I’ve dialled back the gaming this year somewhat. Final Fantasy XV was a decent if not a vintage entry in the Japanese crazy hairstyles roleplaying series, a lot more fun and a lot less pompous than the last one I played, but also even more incomprehensible than usual from a plot standpoint and strangely dudebro-tastic. Uncharted 4 rather inexplicably failed to float my boat – I loved the first one and liked the other two, but this most recent one, despite the usual great looks, barnstorming set pieces and sparky personality, just really bored me. I put it down half way through, which almost never happens for me. Perhaps just a format that’s had its day. I played a big batch of Telltale games and largely enjoyed them all. The Wolf Among Us and Walking Dead Season 2 were both great, but the touch on the Game of Thrones adaptation was a little less sure. The more ‘painterly’ graphical style made things look more wooden not less, the story was a lot more distributed, and you just got the sense that nothing you did would actually make all that much difference. Some great shocks along the way, though. Just started Tales from the Borderlands, and that’s been great so far. Bursting with the wit and cartoonish visual flair that Game of Thrones lacked somewhat. That maybe leaves Dark Souls III as my game of a rather weak year, an entry that continued to fine-tune the system and perhaps make it a little more accessible, while retaining most of the sense of wonder and gruelling gameplay.
WHISKY – Decided to try and finish a few bottles off and cut down my burgeoning collection of dusty glassware, so I didn’t get much new this year. Mackmyra, Swedish distillery, was an interesting light tipple. Then I got a great cask strength Glenfarclas – an independent distillery I really like that specialises in the classic rich, sherried style. Oh, and an Old Pulteney 1989 – I’m not always a fan of that salty maritime business but this is great, complicated, rounded stuff.
THE YEAR AHEAD – There’s a lot up in the air as we go into 2017 both from a professional and personal standpoint. We’ll probably be moving in the new year and starting off another big building and renovation project which will no doubt suck up a lot of energy, and I’m waiting to hear whether a long-standing side project is finally going to bear fruit. I’ll be hitting my usual haunt in Aviles in spain in the summer, and probably Worldcon in Finland too, though that’s yet to be confirmed. Other than that, it’s going to be full steam ahead with the new trilogy, hopefully finishing a first draft of the first book in early feb, so I can then spend a couple of months going over it, refining the characters’ voices and arcs so I’ve got a good foundation for a more detailed plan of the other two books. The dream would be to get well into a draft of the second book by this time next year, but you know what they say about dreams…
Happy new year, readers!
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Progress Report August ’16
Posted on August 28th, 2016 in news, progress
It occurs to me that I have been pretty goddamn remiss on the blogging front over recent times. Nothing lays that bare more than the realisation that my last of what were supposed to be regular bi-monthly progress reports was nearly a year ago. I have become that author I never wanted to be – you know, the one with the dusty old website last updated in 2012 with a post saying ‘I’m back!’, and a front page that proudly trumpets an early review for their last-book-but-three.
Still, I’ve just returned from a long holiday in Scandinavia with the kids (well, when I say holiday, I mean a constant refereeing of various family squabbles) and maybe I can get some regularity back into the posting and writing. Stranger things have happened…
A progress report, then. The last year’s been an odd one (maybe they all are in this business), with some non-book bits and pieces bubbling away in the background and taking up a fair bit of time and energy, of which more later, perhaps. Sharp Ends, my collection of stories in the First Law world, came out at the end of April, and book-wise I’ve been developing a new trilogy set in the First Law world since then. As I’ve probably said before, this is a set of books taking place maybe 25-30 years after the end of Last Argument of Kings, in a world moving rapidly forward into the turmoil of early industrialisation, set mainly in the Union (and the North), featuring some old friends in the background while focussing mostly on a new cast, and perhaps picking up some threads left over from the First Law trilogy a little more directly than the standalone books have.
The First Law was really stewing in my brain throughout my youth, gradually developing, and I spent years as a hobbyist writer, before being published, experimenting with the characters and style and thinking about the plot. The Shattered Sea, meanwhile, was a much more focussed set of three individual, linked stories, really, rather than a grand ambitious trilogy. So you could say I’ve never really taken on such a big project as a professional writer, and I want to make sure I take the time to get it as good as it can be. That means to some extent trying to replicate the situation with the first trilogy – to remove the pressure of imminent deadlines, to just live with the characters until I get comfortable with them and their voices distill down and become vivid and interesting (hopefully), in that effortless way that in fact takes an awful lot of effort to develop. For me, characters are always at the heart of a book (or books) – if the people aren’t interesting, no plot, however packed with shock and explosions, will ever make a mark, whereas if the characters are fascinating and the voices arresting you can watch them do nothing and still be captivated.
Still, you need a plot and a setting and all that other stuff too, and my experience has been that you don’t always know what you need a character to be until you get to the end of a book. Character and plot grow up together and inform each other, in other words. You’ve got to plan carefully, but at the same time you’ve got to experience how the writing comes out – what the characters feel like on the page before you really know where you’re going. So my hugely ambitious and probably in the end completely unworkable plan with these books is to plunge through a rough draft of all three as fast as I can, then see where I stand, and revise the first one thoroughly for publication. That, of course, will mean a pretty considerable wait for the first book but, hopefully, a regular publication schedule thereafter and, again hopefully, the best and most coherent end product.
Anyway, long story short, this is planned to be a trilogy of nine parts – three books each of three parts – and I’ve drafted the first and am tackling the second – so getting towards half way through a really rough first draft of the first book. Feeling pretty pleased with it so far, though experience has taught me that I’ll generally hate books at this stage and suffer many and frequent crises of confidence, so I try not to have high hopes for my feelings while a project is underway. Making progress is enough, actually liking what you’re doing is way too much to ask at this stage. Hoping to put in some concerted chair time in the run up to Christmas and make some epic progress. But then I’m always hoping for that…
And there is your progress report for August.
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Progress Report September ’15
Posted on September 17th, 2015 in appearances, progress
It’s been a bit of a whirlwind of a past few months, but a lot of overseas trips are now behind me. Half a War is out in English with many more languages to follow, and The First Law trilogy has been republished in the US by Orbit, so I’ve entered a brief period of (relative) calm.
I’ve finished the last short story for my collection, Sharp Ends (you’ll find further details including the table of contents in the post below this one) so apart from compiling and giving them a final edit it’s pretty much ready for publication in the UK and US in April next year in hardcover and e-book and with an audiobook read (I very much hope) by Steven Pacey. I expect it will be available in some other languages not too long afterward but I’ve got no solid information on that yet. Cover art is well underway and I’ll probably have something to show in the next couple of months, but for the time being let’s just say that it will be a development of the parchment theme and feature a map of the entire Circle of the World…
Looking to the future – got a few events over the next month or two including Titan Con near Belfast, Gollancz Fest in Manchester and London, and an interview at the Bath Children’s Literature Festival but then I’m aiming to keep the rest of the year free to start thinking about my next project. This, as has often been said, is intended to be another trilogy in the world of the First Law. Most likely it will take place a few years after the end of Red Country, most likely it will pick up the threads of the original trilogy a bit more directly than the standalone books have done, most likely it will again feature a new central cast but with many familiar faces appearing in key supporting roles.
Since about 2001 I’ve always had a novel on the go, starting the next one well before the last came out. This time around, I’ve scarcely begun on the thinking-about-it stage. Furthermore, I haven’t written an adult trilogy since the First Law, which was under very different circumstances, as a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed hobbyist with a lifetime of ideas to put into practice. So the thinking-about-it stage might be quite long and involved this time. In an ideal world I’d also like to produce a rough draft of the whole series before thinking about getting that first one ready for publication, to make sure the trilogy as a whole is as good as it can be.
Bottom line, you won’t see these books on your bookstore shelves for quite some time to come. I shall keep you updated, however…
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Progress Report March ’15
Posted on March 10th, 2015 in progress
Back from a very pleasant trip to the Emirates Literary Festival in Dubai and having, for the first time in some considerable time, a little bit of a break, actually. Maybe the one I was supposed to be having when I started writing the Shattered Sea trilogy a couple of years back. The last book, Half a War, was a tough one to edit and with limited time, but I’m pleased to say it’s now turned in, edited, copy-edited, and due for release in July in hardcover, e-book and audiobook in the US and UK. Still some work to do on covers and maps and so forth, and because of the tight turn around the dates aren’t totally set yet, but I’ll have further details soon.
There’s not much rest for the grimdark, though. I’ll now be turning my attention back to the adult arena, hoping to get a few more stories together for a collection of First Law-based short stories which should hopefully be coming out in 2016 some time – that’ll contain all the short stories I’ve written in the First Law world, including those that have been published in special editions and anthologies and a few as yet unseen. As far as full-length books go, the plan is still for another trilogy set in the First Law world, but I’m still at a very early stage in the development of that, earlier than I’ve ever been before when finishing up a book. My plan is still, ideally, to draft out all three books before preparing the first for publication, which will hopefully mean we can publish all three in a timely fashion and in as good a state as they can be, but would mean a long wait for the first. We shall see. There are a few other non-book irons in the fire at the moment which look like they may keep me busy while I’m dreaming up ideas for this next trilogy.
I also seem to have got a hell of a lot of travel stacking up for this year. I’ll be at Eurocon in St. Petersburg in April, in Barcelona in May, Berlin and Stuttgart in June, touring in the UK for the release of Half a War in July, Poland in August, and Ireland in September. No firm details on any of these quite yet, but I’ll hope to let you know in due course…
And that is your progress report for March.
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Progress Report Oct ’14
Posted on November 3rd, 2014 in progress
Slight delay on this month’s progress report, but I’ve been at Lucca Games and Comics without a reliable internet connection. An amazing event, by the way, with untold crowds rammed into the old walled city. Don’t think I’ve ever seen such swarms of excited and enthusiastic people, or such a high density of dedicated cosplayers.
Anyway, another couple of months roll by. Page proofs of Half the World for both the US and UK editions have now been read over so the text is finished, and aside from some work on maps, copy, covers and etc. the book is done and ready for its Feb 2015 publication.
In spite of a lot of dealmaking distractions which all seem to have come up at once, and a quick trip to the Frankfurt book fair, most of my time has gone into working on the third and final book in the series, Half a War. I’ve drafted the third part and am now well underway with a first draft of the last, so it’s looking good for a finished first draft near the end of November. I’ll then need to spend some time considering what needs to be done, before embarking on some hefty revision and rewriting in December to hopefully produce a coherent second draft by the end of the year. We shall see. Feels like there’s a hell of a lot of rewriting and reshaping to do, right now, and just a fair bit of detail, personality and, you know, good writing to add, but in the past things have come together surprisingly quickly once a first draft is finished. That’s the moment when you know where you’re heading, when you know the paths the characters need to take, and therefore exactly where they need to start. So, fingers crossed that we’ll still be able to get Half a War ready in time for a July 2015 publication as planned.
We should know by the end of the year…
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Progress Report Aug ’14
Posted on August 29th, 2014 in progress
Half a King came out in early July and made no. 3 on the Sunday Times hardcover list, and at a competitive time of year too. Even more pleasing is that it then stuck in the top 10 for 4 weeks. Preorders give you a big boost that first week, so you’ll often see books pop onto the list strongly the week of release but drop straight off. Sticking around tends to mean your book is not only selling to your committed fans but also selling strongly off the shelves, which is a very promising sign.
With all the touring and events however, including Comic Con in San Diego and Worldcon in London, most of July and August got swallowed up by travel and signing and blah, blah, blah. What with the stress and the jet lag and the convention hangovers I’ve always found it tricky to make a lot of progress with writing while on the road, usually sticking to a bit of light reviewing, planning and reading over rather than drafting new stuff, but things do grind inexorably forward.
I did my last reading through and checking over the detail of the language on the second Shattered Sea book, Half the World, at the start of July, and in a highly nimble bit of production work Harper Collins had proofs of the book ready for Worldcon in mid August:
‘Andsome, eh? Once again they’ve gone for an impactful quote on the front with the title on the spine. These will be making their way out into the world over the coming weeks and are to excite folk in the trade, of course, the actual hardcover will have a cover in keeping with the previous one. Half the World is now copy edited too and therefore, aside from the proof-reading phase, basically done. Nothing (at least on the creative side) stands in the way of US and UK publication in early February 2015.
I’m now half way through the first draft of the last book in the trilogy, Half a War. This is pretty much always my lowest ebb with a book. The excitement of starting something new is far behind, but generally you’re still a way off getting the plot and the characters completely straight in your head and the whole thing feels plodding and dull. Oh god will I ever write a good book again? It is some help, though less than you’d think, that I know I’ve felt this way about every book since I finished the First Law. These shorter books do give you less time to get into character, as it were, though, and it doesn’t help that I’ve gone from one point of view character in Half a King, to two in Half the World, to three in Half a War, therefore there’s less time spent with each and at the moment they’re twisting about like snakes with their heads cut off as I struggle to smash them into a shape that fits the (constantly changing) plot. Still, I think I’ve now got a decent plan for the second half of the book which should provide some interesting moments. I just need the characters to be the people who’d do the type of stuff I’ve got in mind, and that means a fair bit of rewriting in the earlier parts. Sigh. So it goes. I’m still a heavy planner, but I find over time my process is getting more and more fluid. The basic plot I have in advance, but the details of how and who and why I get there shift around a lot more than they used to.
Anyway, this year’s big clutch of events is behind me, and though I’ve got a couple of much smaller commitments, the next three months are largely clear to get a full first draft of Half a War together, so I can spend December doing the heavy lifting of rewriting the first half of the book and have a decent, coherent second draft by the end of the year. That should leave ample time to get the book out by its planned publication in July 2015. Such is the hope, anyway.
That is your progress report for August…
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Progress Report June ’14
Posted on June 24th, 2014 in progress
Time sure does fly.
Fair bit of progress the past couple of months, and other than a little continuing work on the secret project I can’t tell you about and probably never will be able to tell you about hence shouldn’t have mentioned, work in May and June has all been on Half a King and sequels, which are now otherwise being called the Shattered Sea books. In reverse order:
The third book, Half a War: first part of four drafted, second part planned in detail, a pretty solid rough plan for the other two parts. Hoping to get the second part drafted over July and August around the many events and touring commitments I’ve got going on for Half a King, though I know from experience it can be tough to get much done as far as writing new stuff goes while on the road. Still, if I can get most of the second part squared away by the end of August, that gives me September, October, November largely free to concentrate on getting parts 3 and 4 drafted, with a view to having a solid 2nd draft by the end of the year. That should work for a July 2015 publication date. Pretty happy with how this book’s going, generally, though it’s still early. Subsequent books in a series are usually that bit easier as you’ve got a lot of the story lines up and running and the setting defined, but these books are slightly different from what I’ve done before in that each book introduces different point of view characters. We shall see…
The second book, Half the World: Written and edited. Still needs a final pass through to consider the detail of the language before it goes for copy edit, but I should be able to get that done while on the trains around the UK at the start of July, and I’m reaching the point now where I’m very pleased with how this one has turned out. Half the World is more or less certain for a Feb 2015 release, though I don’t quite have a specific date yet.
The first book, Half a King, meanwhile, is printed, distributed, and will be released on the 3rd July in the UK, 15th July on the US. I might take the opportunity to say it’s available for pre-order on amazon at a 62% reduced cutting-my-own-throat discount price of £5 for the hardcover and £4.35 for the Kindle edition. Seems like only yesterday I was meeting with publishers to discuss the possibility of this series and now, suddenly, here it is, greeting the public. Early signs are really good, but that never stops a writer crapping their pants, of course, especially since this book is with new publishers both sides of the pond and aimed at a (slightly) different audience. Promotional work has been grinding into gear over the last couple of months – I signed 3,000 copies a few weeks back for Waterstones and other retailers, and I’ve got a fair bit more stock to sign for Goldsboro Books and others over the next couple of weeks. Few interviews and blogs been done as well, along with some talking to bookseller style events, and the UK tour kicks off on 29th June with Edinburgh and will then wend its way around England. Further details here. I’ll then be in and around the west coast of the US from the 22nd June. Further Details here. And I’ll be at Celsius 232 festival along with Brandon Sanderson and Pat Rothfuss in Aviles, Spain 1st-3rd August.
That is your progress report for June…
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Progress Report April ’14
Posted on April 30th, 2014 in news, progress
It’s been a slightly bitty and pernickety couple of months since the last progress report at the end of February. A big part of April got taken up with a hugely exciting secret project the details of which I cannot reveal and probably never will be able to reveal and hence I should never have mentioned in the first place. Half a King plunges toward publication, now firmly slated for July 3rd in the UK and July 15th in the US, and the load of publicity and promotional work, blogs and interviews begins to wind up. It feels like a long old time since I last put a book out – Red Country was all the way back in November 2012 – so I’m rather looking forward to the excitement (and panic) of putting something new in front of readers.
The sequel, Half the World, got a pretty darn good reception from my various editors and agents in the UK and US, I’m delighted to say, but there are still a fair few comments to attend to, not to mention a few things I’d like to look at again and a general smoothing of the language, which I’ll be tackling in May, but nothing that should interfere with its slated publication date of Feb ’15.
Meanwhile I now have a pretty solid plan for the third book, Half a War, a detailed chapter breakdown for the first part, and have drafted the first three chapters, one from each of its point of view characters. I’ll be taking a further look at those over coming weeks, mulling them over, trying to get into the characters’ heads and develop a bit more of an individual style for each of them. Then I’ll be cracking on with the drafting end of May/June in the hope of making a firm start on the second part before the events for Half a King get seriously underway in July.
I’ve also finished up three short stories that are intended to fit into some new editions of the First Law later on this year. The Blade Itself one, A Beautiful Bastard, is an episode from Glokta’s past, the Last Argument of Kings one, Made a Monster, is an episode from Logen’s, the Before They are Hanged one, Hell, gives a little insight into what happened when Dagoska fell to the Gurkish from the point of view of a young acolyte called Temple. More details on when and how these will be available later, but they’ll definitely be in a comprehensive collection of all my First Law short stories which should be appearing some time in 2016.
Also in that collection will be Tough Times all Over, a 12,000 word novelette which is appearing first in George RR Martin and Gardner Dozois’ latest cross-genre heavyweight anthology, Rogues, which is coming out June 17th in the US (I’m not sure there’s currently a UK publisher for it) and will also feature stories from Gillian Flynn, Neil Gaiman, Pat Rothfuss, Connie Willis and Scott Lynch among many others, not to mention GRRM himself.
That is your progress report for April.
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Progress Report Feb ’14
Posted on February 27th, 2014 in progress
Excellent progress since early December, I’m pleased to say, partly due to *ahem* lack of interesting video game releases. Half a King is done and copyedited and done and proofread and done and TOTALLY DONE. ARCs are out in the wild and even now being read and reacted to. WITH UNIVERSAL JOY AND AWESTRUCK ADMIRATION. Publication is early July 2014, US and UK.
Better yet, the second book in this trilogy, Half the World, is done too! Well, I say done, the finished second draft has gone off to my early readers for a first opinion, which I shall attend to and absorb along with some thoughts of mine during March to produce a totally done 3rd draft. Which will then go to editors for further changes. Some more detail on exactly how those processes go down in due course. There’s a fair bit of work still to do on the book, that’s sure, but I think one would have to say that Half the World is looking very good for its provisional publication date of Feb 2015, a mere seven months after Half a King drops.
Alongside the editing of Half the World I’m going to be getting started this month on the planning of the third book, Half a War, with a view to getting the drafting underway in April, with a view to getting the book half done by the time I start travelling for Half a King’s release in July, with a view to getting it finished by the end of 2014, with a view to getting it published a mere five months after Half the World in July 2015. All three out within 12 months. That’s a pretty challenging schedule, but at the moment it’s looking doable. We shall see…
Also got a quick First Law-related short story to knock out in March with a view to getting a collection of all my short fiction together for probably an early 2016 publication. Then we’re on to more adult fantasy in the First Law world, with a very, very provisional pub date of some time 2017. If I haven’t gone insane. Or perhaps if I have.
That is your progress report for February.
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Half the World, Finished! Not.
Posted on January 25th, 2014 in process, progress
Well, kind of. I’ve spoken before of how you (or at least I) never really get that moment of glorious satisfaction when you clack out the words THE END on your typewriter, whizz the final sheet from the drum, plonk it on top of the crisp heap of typescript and allow yourself that one cigarette a year.
For one thing, I rarely write stuff properly in sequence. For another, finishing a draft is where some of the most important work begins – the revision. In the case of Half the World I limped over the finish line late last night when I suddenly realised I’d closed up the last gap in the second-to-last chapter, the last one having been written a couple of days before.
I still need to do the most basic revision on the last of four parts, which is where I read each chapter, often for the first time, chop stuff around, cut stuff out, fix basic errors, and generally smooth it all off to the point that it’s at least readable, if not necessarily good. That’ll probably take me most of next week, then the task of really going through and making the whole thing into a coherent, consistent book will happen in February and March.
So there’s a long way to go, a lot of things to add, a lot of things to cut, a lot of laborious filing and polishing and shaping, but it cannot be denied that I now have a complete draft of Half the World. And, what’s more, it’s not even my next book. Half a King is due out in July this year, and is completely finished, Advance Reader Copies going out to writers and reviewers even as we speak. Half the World is due in February 2015. Been a long, long time since I was a book ahead like this. Still, the last book in this trilogy, Half a War, is currently loosely slated for July 2015, which means getting that finished by the end of this year. No rest for the grimdark…
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