Monday Update: Finished! More or less

All right, so I think everything left to do with the TUYO World Companion is detail work. And maps. Still working on getting maps done. For all I know I may write some more sections, or for that matter take out sections. Or rearrange the sections presently there. Or who knows what.

Notes about regions, seasons, cultures, architecture, astrology … what else? Well, I rewrote the story Ryo tells Lalani, about the origin of the inKarano tribe, as Marag told it to Lalani later. That’s in here. Letters from various people to various other people. I might write a few more of those, not sure. A fairly complete list, alphabetical, of characters, with notes. Less extensive lists of places, with notes. An “interview.” And, of course, the novella, “Returning Hokino’s Knife,” that I’m better satisfied with now that I’ve incorporated suggestions from the earliest first readers. That basically involved pulling some of the subtext I had in mind into the text where the reader can see it. Some very important stuff was not clear enough. I think it is now. The total length of the World Companion is about, I don’t know, something over 80,000 words. The novella is a little less than half of that.

So, whew! That’s well on its way. I haven’t put it up for preorder yet. I won’t until I know that the maps are under control. I added a jpg picture to the file and sent that to the Kindle app on my phone so I can see how it looks. This is not an actual picture that will appear in the book, it’s just a test photograph of the hand-drawn map, just to see how a jpg file looks and whether it loads properly. I haven’t even looked at that yet. I’ll be using that file to proofread as well. I started to make a paper edition for proofreading purposes, gave up because the template was too annoying with ten thousand little sections, and took a look at using Draft to Digital to make a print version instead. That may be simpler. I’ll poke at that some more this week.

So, fundamentally under control! I’m pretty sure! Not under control enough to put up for preorder, but I hopefully soon!

That means I can go back to revising the back half of INVICTUS, yay!

Will I have INVICTUS completely revised by June 15th? Not sure, but not impossible! How about by July 1? Yes, I should think so. I would be quite surprised if this revision takes longer than that. Finishing with INVICTUS and getting it in shape for first readers would allow me to start work on SILVER CIRCLE just about when I intended to, maybe a few weeks behind, but fundamentally “a few weeks behind” equals “about on time” when it comes to my writing schedule.

July and August should be good writing months for me. Short workdays, too hot to do all that much outside, only one puppy underfoot …

^{Haydée crashes hard after going out for a run with the big dogs.}

Haydée is doing so well that I’m almost starting to worry. I mean, if she never, ever pees in the house, how can I tell her not to pee in the house? Well, I suppose she will make a mistake eventually. Meanwhile, she is certainly a very (very) easy puppy. I’ve said for ages that some puppies are easy to housetrain and some more difficult, without regard for time of year or anything. But I suspect having the deck door open for the first bit of housetraining may help. Or else all these recent puppies just turned out to be very easy. I do need to take her more places over the rest of June. Very important to socialize a puppy before twelve weeks and here we are, the clock ticking away toward that date.

Anyway, SILVER CIRCLE! I’m barely thinking about it at this point. The World Companion kept me in that world, so I know more about the upcoming novels that will be set there. I’ve ordered two more covers, by the way, so that is a commitment. One is for a long novella/short novel that will be called MARAG. I bet you can guess that this is the one where Sinowa and Marag get together. The other is for probably a normal-length novel called RIHASI, after the female lead.

BUT SILVER CIRCLE WILL COME FIRST. Next thing after finishing the INVICTUS revision. I am determined.

Once I let myself think about the Black Dog series, I hope that SILVER CIRCLE will unroll cooperatively before me. I suspect parts of it may not be all that cooperative. But I do know a lot about it. I’ve even got pieces of it sitting around.

I’ll need to re-read at least the novellas in the 4th collection, maybe also COPPER MOUNTAIN. That should put me in the right place to actually work on the final novel in this series. I expect it to be something of a pain in the neck, and I expect it to go kind of long. Nevertheless, if I start it July 1, I’m betting I can have a draft complete or at least nearing completion by October 1. We shall see!

Therefore, this week, detail work for the World Companion, actual focus on INVICTUS, but SILVER CIRCLE is now a definite gleam in my eye.