Book Three recently passed 60K words, but still needs the equivalent of two more chapters’ worth of content before I can declare its first Part complete. This puts it on track to equal or exceed the length of my first novel.
Speaking of Book One, I’m still waiting around for word from the acquisitions editors currently perusing it. Just this morning I got antsy enough to check my calendar, then took a calming breath. It hasn’t actually been that long yet. I just have to take life as it comes—kinda like the readers of this intermittent blog.
And speaking of taking things as they come, I’ve been mildly amused to find myself twelve years and 278K words into an epic high fantasy saga, with seemingly nothing left to do but write meet-cutes and awkward dates. Le sigh. Such is life, especially when I’ve arranged for the narrative to take a sharp turn into espionage-thriller terrain. I just hope the incessant banter comes across as witty rather than as self-indulgent. It’s certainly a change of pace from Book Two’s dire sobriety.
The second half of this book is shaping up to be a doozy. I keep tossing new locations, items, people, and events into the stew like there’s no tomorrow—kneading and layering the narrative for all I’m worth—all the while cringing at the callback commitments I’m racking up. I aspire to complexity, so I can’t just introduce cool things without making them an integral part of the story, which means they gotta reappear at some point as significant plot elements. My running list of Unexpected Things That Need To Also Be Inevitable continues to expand. Fortunately, my main cast has yet to show up there.
Arlam Online 