Warning: The last book might be larger than the recent couple. I’m sure that’s breaking everyone’s heart to hear. I have a gut feeling this book will end up closer to 110k, maybe more. Here are the exact sizes (in words) of all the Abyss series books (for those who are interested):

• The Archons 136,628
• Secrets of the Tome 115,948
• The Demon in Me 96,431
• The Encounter 115,367
• Nathanael 90,318
• Hopeless 94,959

I’m already at 72k words on Final Match, but I just started writing the scenes for Act III. I’ll be adding scenes as I need to make the story work at the end. There are a lot of threads to tie off, so it’ll take a serious amount of words to move the story to the right place where everything comes together. Right now, I’m not sure how many words it’ll take, but the story is the story, so I’ll write it until it ends.

For those who haven’t followed this blog (or the Facebook posts that come from the blog www.galacticcorebooks.com), Final Match is the last book of the Abyss series. It’s going to be a great relief to finally have this series done. Originally, I had designs to do a 10-book or even a 20-book series, but I decided to cut it back to 7 (otherwise, I’d probably spend the rest of my life writing this series). The first book took several months to write. That was due to the fact that I had to create The Tome of Revelations, including the ink drawings and the crazy bible-like numbering scheme. I do regret not bulking it up more, but there is enough in that thing that doesn’t really apply to the story. The printed copy is very thin because it’s a little less than 23,000 words long. About 1/3 of a novel in length. Still, it’s fun to flip through that crazy thing and look up some of the passages and look at the pictures to match with the books.

Here’s a picture of the physical book:

Here’s a sample of the interior:

The physical copy is available on Amazon, but you can use the newsletter signup on the blog site to get a free eBook copy.

Oh! Now you want to see my little make-shift studio where I created those ink drawings. I see how you are…

Here’s the rough sketch for the Temple of King Pyrrhus:

I used a whiteboard as a temporary drafting table. Then I made a pencil drawing (using a ruler, of course) to sketch the basic drawing I wanted. The pencil drawing is always a bit light.

Next, I tape vellum over top of the pencil drawing and trace with an ink pen:

When I say ink pen, I mean a quill type pen with India ink in a bottle.

I drew the details separately so I could control how they fit as well as the angles using photoshop:

This includes things like the trees and scaffolding:

To capture the images and put them into digital format, I have a large professional-grade light where I can control the color and brightness. Then I use my Canon 6D to photograph them:

You can see my pen and ink in the lower left corner, sitting on the table.

Once the image is completed, I paste it into Scrivener and fit the text above and below it. The finished picture looks like this one:

Now everyone knows why it took so long to produce the first book and The Tome at the same time. Since then, each book has become successively easier to write. That’s due to the fact that I have most of the characters and their personalities memorized. I can get my head into the scene and just write. Most of the books only took about two months to write.

Technically, I could spit out six of these per year, but I finished The Traveler trilogy earlier this year and started the next Abyss book (Nathanael) in March.

My Next Project

I don’t have my next project set in stone yet, but I’m eyeing a cozy murder mystery series that I made up. It’ll include a robot dog (that nobody knows about except the protagonist). So there’s some technology involved in it, though it’s not technically SciFi. I’ll probably have to come up with a pen name. I’ll put links on this blog for anyone who is looking for those books in the future (assuming I write them). The Daphne books are similar to a cozy series: no swear words, comical situations, mysteries. My writing skills were not nearly as refined as they are today. That series was written in 2022, and I started with the intent of writing one short story as a practice project. When I started writing the first book (which is now named Novis Terminal), it went longer than a short story but too short for a novel (it was 42,000 words long). Anyway, I had started the rough draft of The Archons that year and just couldn’t make it work. I just didn’t have enough experience with depth of writing to do it. By the time I finished Novis Terminal, I already had ideas for an entire series. So, I just went with it. The longest of those books (Stolen Property) was 56,000 words. Which meant that I was able to crank them out in a month and a half by the time I got good at it. I bet I could write those in one month’s time. Though, I’m not sure if I’ll ever write a novel that short anymore. Any new novels, even cozies, would probably end up 80 to 90k in length.

There is always the possibility that I’ll write a new set for any of the series that I have currently published. The crazy thing is that I have 15 Daphne story ideas already somewhat fleshed out, including one about RUSTY’s memories. Oh, there’s a foreshadowing piece of a scene that I planted for future use. Those who have read that scene in Supercomputer are probably cussing my name right now. I’ll give that Daphne book some heavy thought and create one that I can add to the current Chronicles. That’ll make it a 6-book set. My fear is that my skills have advanced so much that people will demand I go back and rewrite the first five Daphne books (that would be legit). The thought of rewriting the Daphne books has crossed my mind, but I don’t have the time to look back. Gotta move forward.

As I’ve mentioned on this blog, there is still the possibility of a future series that goes along with the Abyss universe. There’s an entire story about the people who lived 3,000 years earlier, from the point where they ran into the Archons to the part where the Exodus from Banchin started. Then, there is a massive story about the Exodus itself. Most of it is glossed over in the Tome of Revelations and the tiny short stories I put in each book under the Prologues. Will I dive into that universe? Maybe. I might just dip my toe into those stories by producing one book that covers a small aspect of it, like the discovery of the Archons. Then, see how people receive it. But that’s all in the future.