update: Finished! Pretty much

Okay, so, just wrote a novel in three weeks.

I’m pausing to appreciate that, just for a minute. That was just, well, not exactly unexpected, but TANO came out decidedly longer than I expected. Remember how I said I didn’t think it would go to 90k? Yeah, actually it went just a hair over 100,000 words. I honestly thought I was going to write just a novella! Nope, guess not. Raise your hand if you’re surprised! Anybody? Yeah, didn’t think so.

This was only about 4000 words per day, by the way. That is really not that much given this was Christmas break and a Tuyo-world novel. Very pleased those are so consistently fast for me! Let’s hope that continues!

So, what’s next?

I need to read it from the top and smooth it out. Probably I’ll trim a bit, but I won’t make anything like the dedicated effort I made to cut Tasmakat. If Tano winds up about 100k, fine, that’s a great length.

Then I need to get eyes on it. This is a good time to let me know if you would like an early look, especially if you are feeling analytical. I don’t see how I can ask the people who are currently reading Tasmakat to read this one too. But I want to release this before Tasmakat and that means moving briskly. I want character and relationship critique, not proofreading. I mean, proofreading too, but not yet.

Wow, just realized I better add Tano to the also-by sections in other books, and add a teaser somewhere. The ebook of Tarashana is the obvious place, since Tano begins roughly twenty minutes after Tarashana ends. The whole thing takes place during a few days, about a week, between Tarashana and Tasmakat.

That means I need to make Tasmakat book 7, as Tano just turned into book 6. If Amazon won’t let me reorder books in a series, then Tano will start a new, related series. It looks like it’s possible to reorder books, but I won’t be certain until I do it.

I should post a snippet from Tano here too, regardless. I’ll do that later this week, I expect. Maybe enough of a snippet to show you the problem that drives the story. Not sure how long that would be.

OMG I just realized I have to do back cover copy! Ugh. I guess that’ll be no later than February, which is when the cover will be available. There’ll be a horse on the cover, actually a pony I guess. I suggested a Fjord horse type. A horse turned out to be a perfect suggestion. When I told the cover artist to add a horse, I didn’t realize how important this pony is in the story, but yep, ideal. Maybe the back of my brain worked that out without my noticing.

Anyway, when I get the cover, I’ll decide on a release day and put it up for preorder. I would like March, but if I’m feeling nervous about getting it ready by then, might be April.

THEN what?

As soon as Tano is in shape to send off to other eyes, I’m going to bite the bullet and do the annoying final revision of No Foreign Sky. That’s next for sure. Ugh. I like the book fine, but this is, I fear, going to be a serious pain in the neck. But, a) I need to do it, and b) various complications in my personal life mean I don’t want to start writing a new book, eg Silver Circle, right now anyway.

My new! improved! potential release schedule:

March — Tano

May — No Foreign Sky

July — Tasmakat

September — Invictus part one

October — Invictus part two

December — Silver Circle, which (sigh) has not been written yet. If various other things go well in my life, this shouldn’t be a problem.