Category: Writing

The third novel in the “Seed of Glory Sown in Sorrow” saga stands completed. A five-year journey has reached its end, and that end is spectacular.

I’m very proud of this installment. With the plot of a spy thriller, the vistas of a travelogue, the action of an Arabian-Nights-meets-Cold-War swashbuckler, and a climax as frenetically involved and emotionally wrenching as anything Sanderson has ever written, Loose the Sealed Tongue takes its place as a unique and crucial volume in the tale of Hugh Conrad and Ilina Lightkeeper’s struggle to reconquer Arlam.

Here’s the story so far:

• Book 1, A Sea Sought in Song — 116,559 words (~389 pages)

• Book 2, Wrath and Crimson Rime — 101,753 words (~339 pages)

• Book 3, Loose the Sealed Tongue — 121,434 words (~405 pages)

The fourth novel—Bind the Tree of Time—will be the last. As of this moment, the epic saga is 3/4 finished with a running total of 339,746 words, or approximately 1,132 pages.

The outline I made on September 13th—103 days ago—encompassed six chapters: the bulk of the novel’s second half (aside from the entr’acte Cadenza and the ending Epilogue, which I’d already written). I largely adhered to this structure, although I ended up eliding/combining some scenes and adding additional ones as the need arose. It’s interesting to review the analytics:

• Chapter 11 — 9 scenes outlined — 11,141 actual words

• Chapter 12 — 11 scenes outlined — 8,940 actual words

• Chapter 13 — 8 scenes outlined — 3,520 actual words

• Chapter 14 — 10 scenes outlined — 3,571 actual words

• Chapter 15 — 26 scenes outlined — 7,105 actual words

• Chapter 16 — 5 scenes outlined — 1,405 actual words

The final installment will take a while to arrive. In the meantime, I’ll be doing everything in my power to get the dang series published, God willing.

I can’t wait for you to sink your teeth into this thing.

Merry Christmas! There’s only one chapter left in Book Three.

I now get to write the scene that goes with THIS.

Here’s the outline now:

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: