Category: News

I returned from my hunting trip three days ago and I’ve already finished the next chapter. Things are getting crazy emotional, and I was finally able to instantiate the action I’ve for years associated with the final two minutes of THIS synth track by Antti Martikainen. Good times.

The next chapter will be the climax, the peak, the apex of the plotline of Book Three. A fever pitch of mayhem.

I’ll see you on the other side.

Here’s what my outline looks like now:

Ladies and gentlemen, I am on fire.

I just wrote an entire chapter in a single week.

The momentum cascade is accelerating.

Here’s what my Book Three Part Two outline looks like now:

Only three chapters remain before I’m finished with Book Three of my epic fantasy tetralogy.

I’ll be gone hunting next week, so my momentum may stall out briefly, but at this point I feel like I can actually see the end, can almost reach out and touch it. It is, as they say, nigh.

It’s hard for me to believe it’s only been three weeks since my last major update. During that time I wrote ~9,000 words and completed the twelfth proper chapter of Book Three.

To describe this pace as blistering would be an understatement. I haven’t written this quickly since before I had kids. Part of the explanation is that the infrastructure improvement which occupies so much of my free time (lol) during the warmer months has been foreclosed by snow, but, more pertinently, I’ve passed a momentum event horizon. Having already done the grueling work of setup over the past several years, I can now flick the dominoes and watch them fall. It’s exhilarating.

If you’ve read Brandon Sanderson’s “Oathbringer,” you’ll remember that there’s a point about 700 pages in where a plodding plot abruptly transforms into a climax that doesn’t stop till it’s blown out your adrenal glands 200 pages later. Well, the entire second half of Book Three is my version of that. I’ve barely gotten started, and already I’m feeling high. By the time I’m finished I may need medical intervention.

Anyway, I can’t wait for you to read the preceding ~300,000 words in the series so you too can get to this point.

Here’s what my Book Three Part Two outline looks like now:

Good news: I’ve finished the first “proper” chapter (not counting the standard intermission-esque Cadenza) of my third novel’s second half. Whew, that’s a mouthful. Maybe a visual will help. Remember that outline I showed off a couple months ago? Here’s how much of it I’ve gotten through:

So yeah—only nine line-items. Not all that much. And now for the bad news: clocking in at over 11,000 words, this latest chapter is the second-longest in the whole series thus far. At this rate, with sixty line-items remaining, I’m looking at over 60,000 more words before I can wrap this installment.

Fortunately, I don’t think things will continue at this rate. As the action accelerates (and the upcoming action is truly insane) I’ll need less and less establishing detail, and I’ll be able to cut back and forth with greater rapidity. Book Three’s still gonna be my longest to date (it’s already at 97,000 words), but not quite that long.

The title of Chapter 11 is “Welcome to the Party,” and that encapsulates my vibe. This night’s still young, my friends. There’s a wild ride ahead.