The Traveler Trilogy

I still have six days off, not counting today. I managed to get caught up on my writing yesterday. That was primarily due to the fact that I had put 0 days on my schedule for the 23rd through the 25th. Then, I ended up doing some writing on those days. I went from 8,000 words behind schedule to a couple hundred ahead. Today, I scheduled myself to write 2,000 words (my normal weekday amount). I’m off today and the rest of the week, so I’m writing more than my quota. So far, I’ve written over 3,000 words so far, so I’m up by over a thousand. I’m going to keep going while I have the story in my head. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I can get some killer writing days in this week and get way ahead of the game.

Holidays are always rough for getting any writing done. Still, I schedule the days and try to get them done. Otherwise, I would probably just put it off and not do much of anything. There were multiple causes for falling behind, but I had one scene I had written for the book that was going to connect to a second scene. I didn’t like the way that subplot was going, so I changed my mind, killed off some useless characters, and deleted those two scenes. So that put me back more than a thousand words (for the scene I had already written.

At 45k, that means that I’m halfway from my predicted novel length for this book. I plan to wrap up the rough draft for this book and plow right into book 3. I won’t be doing any editing before Book 3 is rough-drafted. Once both books are written, then I’ll loop back and re-read the whole story while editing. The final phase will be the read-out-loud, where I catch all my awkward sentences and incorrect words, crazy grammar errors, etc.

What this all means is that once I publish these books, I’ll be publishing both at once. Plus, that will cap off the story, and there will be no more waiting for the next book to be written for this series. Soon after that, I’ll get right back into the Abyss series and write book 5. That story is percolating in the back of my mind.

Escape from the Abyss Series

I haven’t nailed down how many more books there will be in this series, though I’d like to finish the series by the end of 2024. I know what book five will be, but will there be one book or two after that? Not sure. I’m going to play that by ear for now.

Then what comes next?

You, dear read, must think my head is going to explode from all these irons in the fire. Ah, but I love to think ahead. Way ahead. I don’t write a book without having ideas for the next book floating around. In this case, I don’t want to be sitting in front of a blank page five seconds after I publish the last Abyss book. Oh no. I have all kinds of ideas for future books, but I’m planning to change it up a bit. My first plan is to write stand-alone books to gauge how well they are received. Each book I write will be something that is open-ended. I’ll make sure the story can fit into a chronicle. That way, I can write a second book that can be read out of order, and I can continue to write books that resonate with people and call it quits when the books get stale. This relieves me from the problem of dropping a first book to a planned series that doesn’t perform well, followed by a year or two of writing the rest of the series that sees little traffic because people can’t get past the first book. The Abyss series is doing pretty well. The first book sells well, but the read-through isn’t fantastic. The current 4-book series is keeping its head above water, but not by much. I expect it to be better when there are six or seven books in the series and complete. A lot of people don’t like to start a partially completed series, and I don’t really blame them. The fact that the series is currently uncompleted is preventing sales of the first book. The low read-through? Well, who knows? I have a couple of theories: people don’t like the first book, or they haven’t finished the first book yet and may buy the second book later (I get this gut feeling because book two sales are trickling in).

Anyway, live and learn. I think back about the Abyss series and remember when I thought it was going to be a huge set of books. It had potential, but people are souring on long sets. Especially if it takes three months to write the next book. Don’t get me wrong, I would be happy to live with the story for the next five years, cranking out four books per year, but few people want to wait that long for the final book. There is the possibility of a spin-off, though. I mean, what happens when they make it back to the colonies? Yup, big battles, final showdown.

Anything’s possible.