So a new year has begun. (By the time you read this, anyway. As I write, December is only hours old.) As you may have read the other day, I’m scaling back my quantity of posts here to make room in my “busy” schedule for more fiction. Assuming all goes well—it never does—I have quite a bit prepared for 2017, and more in the works. So let’s take a look, shall we?
New novel: Nocturne
This is the big one. Nocturne was my November writing project for 2016, and the month was a resounding success. Now, it’s time to see if the book itself will be. It’s a full-length novel, only the third one of those I’ve ever written. I like the characters, love the magic system, and find myself very drawn to the political interplay the story brings. I’ll admit, I’m biased. Hopefully, I won’t be the only one to like it.
Nocturne is also the first novel I’ll be putting through my new “pipeline”. The first finished draft will come out soon for Patreon supporters ($10/month). Then, after I’ve edited the thing into something coherent, I’ll put it out for the $3/month “serious readers”. Finally, once I’m confident of a release, it’ll go to the “casual” readers willing to put up a dollar a month, and also to the Kindle Store. I’m thinking $3.99 for the price there, but we’ll see.
The timeframe for Nocturne is pretty strict. I’ve already decided the absolute latest I can release it is August 21. That’s because the great solar eclipse of 2017 occurs then, and a solar eclipse is the defining moment in the life of the novel’s primary protagonist. That will be for the “official” release through KDP, but Patreon supporters will get it earlier. Right now, I’ve penciled in January 16 for the draft, April 21 for the supporters’ advance copy, and maybe somewhere in June or July for the final release. If that seems like a tight schedule, well, it is. On the plus side, I’m an indie. I don’t have the luxury of worrying about multiple back-and-forth rounds of editing, finding a slot at the press, working with cover artists, or setting up a publicity tour. So I can have a turnaround on the order of a few months.
Otherworld novellas
The Otherworld series is probably my favorite. It’s my worldbuilding playground, my sandbox for creating a setting, a language, a culture, etc. Oh, and the story’s pretty good, too. (Again, I’m biased.) I’ll be dribbling out the rest of the drafts for the series over the course of the next few months. Only once those are all out will I start work on reader releases, and I’m not sure if these will ever go on KDP. Maybe once I start Season 2.
Each of these runs about 50-60K in word count, and here’s my tentative schedule for the draft posts:
- Out of the Past — November 2, 2016
- The City and the Hill — January 6, 2017
- A Matter Settled — February 10, 2017
- Written in Black and White — March 24, 2017
- The Bonds Between Us — May 5, 2017
- Situational Awareness — June 9, 2017
- A Peace Shattered — July 21, 2017
- Long Road’s End — September 1, 2017
I’m also planning a series of Otherworld shorts, currently using the working title A Bridge Between Worlds. These will follow on from “Long Road’s End”, covering the intervening time before Otherworld #9, which hasn’t even entered the planning stages yet.
Linear short stories
The first three short stories in the Linear Anthology, “Either Side of Night”, “The Last Captain”, and “Forged in the Fires”, are already out on Patreon. The second half of the cycle will follow soon. I don’t actually have titles for these yet—as I write this on December 1—but they don’t take that long to write, so they shouldn’t be too hard. The dates I’m looking at for release are January 27 for Part 4, February 24 for Part 5, and April 7 for Part 6. And that’s it. I’m not planning on continuing the story past that at the moment, though I might come back to it down the road.
As for a few other details on this series, I’m still deciding. My original idea had been to release them separately on Patreon, then do a big collection (hence the name Linear Anthology) for KDP. Remember that Amazon has a cutoff for its 70% royalties: 99ยข books only get to collect 35%. I don’t feel comfortable charging three bucks for any individual story of this size, so I’d have to either combine them or settle for the lower royalties. Of course, if the Patreon thing works out, then less royalties won’t matter as much, and the cheaper release on the Kindle Store might drive more people to Patreon. It’s a lot to think about, and I don’t have the answer yet.
Other plans
If you’ve paid attention, you’ll see that I have at least three short stories planned for this year. Add in A Bridge Between Worlds, which will contain five more shorts, and that’s eight. And that’s only the beginning of what I want to do in 2017.
Let’s assume I’ve finished Nocturne by this time. As I write, I’m about 75% done with the first draft. Editing is a separate process, so we’ll ignore it for the time being. On top of those eight short stories, I’ll be doing another original novel in November, and I want to finish Lair of the Wizards, one I’ve been working on for a year and a half. The Otherworld “Season 2” collection would be a total of 8 novellas, probably adding up to half a million words. That might not be feasible, so I won’t put them all on the list. Maybe one or two. And then there’s a short story I plan on writing late in the year for all my loyal supporters…assuming I have any by that time.
So that’s the plan so far: 9 short stories, 2 novellas, and a novel and a half. All told, using some generous word counts, I’d call that about 400,000 words written. Throw in about 80-100 posts here on Prose Poetry Code, and you’re talking 500,000. It’s ambitious by any standard, but I have decided that it’s better to fail at unrealistic goals than to succeed at easy ones. Go big or go home, as they say, and I’m going big in 2017. I hope you’ll be along for the ride.