Escape from the Abyss – Book 2

As of this post, I’ve reached 24k words or 20% completion of the rough draft. That’s really good for one week’s worth of work. I managed to put down 6,000 words yesterday and another 6,000 today. That’s twice the productivity I had planned. I could readjust my spreadsheet to move the release date up, but I’m not certain I can keep up the pace. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it pans out that way.

I have this little self-motivation going on. My words per day and my total words are out of sync by 500 words (or so). As soon as I reach a milestone of total words, I’m just a few more words from rounding up my daily amount. So I go back and forth like that until I get too tired to do more. It’s working and I’m going to keep at it.

I suspect there will be some missed days. Summer has started (it reached almost 80 degrees today), so I know that we’ll be hiking soon. That will remove some of my weekend productivity. That fact is also motivating me to write more words during the week to sort of “bank” them ahead of time.

This is only the first week of writing the rough draft. I don’t know if I’ll hit a roadblock (that’s happened before) or if I can keep up the productivity until I hit my 120k word goal. I am almost to the 25% mark, which is a significant spot in the book. My turning point didn’t line up quite right, but I can adjust the scenes a bit to make it hit the right spot. I also have more material in my head that I’ll be adding to the earlier scenes. Right now, though, I’m not worrying about that. I’m just trying to get the main bones of the story in place before I forget how I want the scenes to flow.

I’d really like to have this book out by the end of June. That would allow me to go right into book 3. I already have material that I put into the outline for book 3. Stuff that was just too much for this book. I also have a main plot for this book and the material I pushed into book 3 is main plot worthy. So book 3 will be based on the material I pushed out of this book.

I keep thinking about the production rate of this book and wondering if I could have 5 books done by the end of the year. Oh, that would be nice. The releases would be in June, August, October, and December. Then I could go right into 2024 with a plan to do the next 5 books. Of course, it all depends on how the first few books perform. I’ll know for sure when I start writing the fifth book. If this series turned into a downer, then I’ll have to change my plans. I could tie off the story, or start writing books in The Traveler series while doing one book in this series every once in a while. I probably sound ADHD, but I have to alter my long-term plans according to the sales figures. Either way, this series will be completed as well as The Traveler series. I can’t have an unfinished series sitting on Amazon. It will never sell and probably drag down the sales of other books. Not a good marketing plan.

Anyway, you can check my progress by coming to this site and looking at the Live Progress meter on the right side. Or, if you’re on an iPad or iPhone, it appears near the bottom of the page.

Daphne

I’m going to move Daphne out of the newsletter freebies and fix the graphic that pops up to include The Tome (and remove the Daphne book cover). I’ll upload the book to Smashwords and set the price to free. If you want it for free now, you can use the sign-up form and download the book from there.

The Archons

The first book, The Archons, is still at 99 cents. That price is not going to last long, so get it while you can. I’ll post again to give people a heads-up on when the promotion price will end. I’ll probably give it a couple of days. But, why wait? Grab a copy now, keep it forever, and read it when you’re ready.

The Traveler – Book 2

Not sure when I’ll get to this book. I’d like to squeeze it in at the same time I’m working on Book 2 of the Abyss series, but not sure how I can carve out extra writing time. I do have a rough outline that I put together for the second book. If I suddenly get an interest in this book, I’ll put more resources into it. I can’t sacrifice the book I’m currently working on, but I might be able to squeeze in an extra half-hour a day to write some of this story. Maybe I’ll give that a try this week and see if it burns me out, or maybe it’ll be enough of a distraction to keep me going.

Post in the comments if you’ve read the first book and are really interested in the second book. Otherwise, I’m going on the assumption that everyone has forgotten about that book since it came out in December of last year. I know I can’t remember what I read back in December.