DEE-YOU-ENN

My intent has been to post here at least once a week, but obviously that hasn’t happened lately, and the reason is my usual one: I’ve been really focused on cranking out the words on SEAFLAME!, and guess what! Today I finished the first draft!

So…how did it come out in the end? Well:

I’m not gonna lie, folks: while I gave myself permission to write a long book, mainly because I wanted to write a long book, I didn’t quite expect it to be this long! That’s a lot of words. It’s about 60,000 words longer than Stardancer‘s first draft, about 50,000 longer than The Wisdomfold Path‘s, and it’s about 30,000 longer than what was my longest book to date yet, Amongst the Stars. Plus, this is only the first book in a duology, and I plan to take a break from this project before I draft Book II, so it’ll be a while before this book sees the light of day beyond my own eyes. Sorry, folks, that’s just the way of it. But I will say this: I think I’ve done some really nifty work here, if I do say so myself. Certainly there’s some very strong character writing, and I look forward to seeing how it’s received!

SEAFLAME! is my Dumas-inspired adventure novel, and it’s a “fantasy” by virtue of taking place in a completely imaginary world, and there is no magic in it at all. It was a lot of fun to write, and I’m really glad to have a draft complete, because this is a project that I’ve started three times already. Third time was the charm, though!

So what’s next? Ghostcop II (more on Ghostcop to come in the next few months), and then the first draft in a new space opera series (which will be set in the same universe as The Song of Forgotten Stars, but the stories won’t intersect), and then either SEAFLAME! Book Two or Forgotten Stars IV. I like having my work planned out way in advance. Almost makes me feel like a real writer!