Quick Update!

Even though I just published a post, I wanted to try to keep update and topic posts separate. Easier to find back posts if I pay more mind to the sorting!

First off, I finished a draft on a second 'short' story. This one, currently called All-Seeing Eye, falls at about 16K right now. That can change along the way. This is the first of my side stories based on UnNamed, going back to a pivotal point in the mercenary's history and (spoiler-free) after his run-in at the Uther Coliseum. As you may know, UnNamed largely dealt with an antihero that has a memory issue. The characters were described in pronouns and nouns and nicknames of an ambiguous nature, not from his point of view, but with limited narration to keep the reader hindered by his own challenges. The short story does much the same, only directly from his point of view. In this way, you get much more of his voice rather than just a narration inspired by it.

It will be compiled with the first short story I wrote as a sort of prequel to characters of my first series, called Drawn to Perfection, currently at 9K words. This follows Dinsch and Seles, Bryfolk (rabbit human hybrids) that you first encounter in the first trilogy, The Truth about Heroes (also called the Heroes Trilogy). Again, this one is written from their POV, an interesting take on how they view their history and where their impressions were both vastly different yet very much the same.

The third story I'm working on for this anthology, currently called 'Ashes, Ashes', returns to UnNamed's storyline, but explores what had happened if the mercenary didn't make a pivotal change in UnNamed. Because this one actually delves into the Maidens' back stories, I'm planning it as third person omniscient rather than multiple first person POVs. In order to be able to show how it ties to the history, the limited perspective and biases wouldn't work as well.

I believe I'll probably keep this to four stories, but only if the word count exceeds 80K for all four. The fourth is yet to be determined, but I do want to revisit characters from the first series. Yet to decide that. If I throw in a fifth, it could be Gretel's Gift (currently in a multi-author anthology, The Magical Book of Wands, but will be released back to me at the end of October), a standalone short story or I'll come up with a wild card idea. It may be another spin-off of a current series, a unique fantasy tale or even an alternative universe idea I've thought about, involving characters whose lives took a different turn. Anything goes, but I'd like to be able to decide a unifying theme before deciding how they'll be packed and published.

A little longer than I'd hope for when I said this would be 'quick' but I'm excited to do some short stories before I go back to the UnHeard behemoth. I'll probably stick to short stories for the duration of March before I focus up on the epic beast but I did a quick 70K for the draft in November and that was actually conservative. Quick math: if UnHeard were 300K words (UnSung is around 260K) and I have 10 months to write it (leaving a month to prepare it for publishing), that means (easy math there), I would only have to do 1K words a day at worse (this would also leave me with a first draft when I should have several drafts and an edit so let's not do that). The first draft should at LEAST be done in half that time so double it (2K a day). I write about 1K an hour and writing days typically mean no less than 3 hours of writing and often go a full 8. It's possible to do about 10K on a terrific day. I COULD do 300K in a month, technically, but not if I want a coherent, well-planned story, so planning doesn't really make 10K days realistic without thorough planning of all scenes written then. It's far more realistic that I do about 3-5K on most days. Having ample time to edit and draft, at least two solid months being ideal. 

Also, my life is not writing, so even if things do get hectic or I need a break, it's best to be ahead when possible. After drafting, I often walk away from the story completely for a few weeks, if only to make it easier to catch mistakes. This is sometimes not a total break, since it's a good time to write short stories. I do enjoy playing video games, so that's a nice break too.

Ahem, so... short stories for now, warming back up to the big show. I really just wanted to gush about writing because I can't withhold everything until the big finale. Talking about it helps me blurb it later too, so it's always worthwhile. Back to writing I go!