Let’s see: in the first ten years (2006 – 2016), I managed to write twenty-seven novelettes, or about 400,000 words; in the second ten years (2016 – 2026), I’ve managed twenty-one (almost), or about 326,000 words. I’ve slowed down a bit, it seems. —In my defense, that second decade did kick off with Trump 1.0; I only managed six novelettes total during those four dire years. When Biden swept in with his brief interregnum of reason resumed? Remember how we danced in the streets? I managed four novelettes in 2021 alone.
Four novelettes in a year. —When I first began, that seemed like a prudently doable pace: four seasons, two volumes per season, eleven novelettes per volume, at four per year we’d be talking, what, twenty-two years? Twenty-four, twenty-five years, with a little wiggle room, we’d be wrapping up around 2030 or so. Plenty of time for an epilogue.
Instead, it’s been more like just under two and a half per year? Pushing completion out to 2043? 2045, maybe? And I would be how old by then?
(Of course, when I first began, it was gonna be five volumes: a hundred and ten novelettes. I should mention that I trimmed it to four pretty early on for story and structural reasons—not for time. In case you were concerned.)
I should maybe pick up the pace.
Twenty years, though: I’ll see about setting up a reading or two somewhere in the next month or so. And there’s this:
A hardcover edition of vol. 1, to be released on Tuesday, October 13th. It’ll retail for thirty-seven dollars US, and while it’s listed in Bowker and Ingram, pre-orders will largely be up to the whims of individual retailers—but! You can pre-order through me for only twenty-five dollars US, plus whatever shipping and handling: handsomely re-designed, an austerely elegant dust jacket, and the first eleven novelettes of the epic, at nearly a third off the retail price.
And, I mean, you know how important pre-orders are to publishers, and gauging the public’s interest, and determine how much to support and what to do next. There’s three more volumes to do up this nice, after all. Plus another two, in maybe about six or seven years? We’ll see.
Posted 9 hours ago.
