The Traveler Trilogy

OK, maybe I’m being overly dramatic. I still have almost a month before I meet up with my estimated deadline. All of my planned scenes for book 3 (Dead End) are complete. I have a lot of “Fixing” to do for that book, but it’s coming along. It’s sitting at just over 68,000 words right now, but I have some partially finished scenes that will definitely add up to 2k words. I expected the book to come out around 75k words or so. I may have to move a scene from book two to book three since book two is almost 80k in length. I’m going to do my initial grammar check and read-through while fixing stuff I left hanging in book three first. Then, I’ll go through book two and move something if I think it needs it. Other than that, I’ll be wrapping things up pretty soon.

Escape from the Abyss Series

Once the trilogy is complete, there will be no rest for the wicked. I have plans to go right into book five of the Abyss series. Then I’ll be on to book 6. I still have plans to finish at least two more Abyss books before concluding that series. By the time I start writing book six, I should know for sure if I’m going to make it into a 7-book series or cap it off at six books.

Assuming I wrap up book six and end the series, then I’ll take some time to plan a new book. I have ideas. In fact, I have a couple of scenes from two different stories written. Plus, I have a list of possibilities. My plan is to write a stand-alone book that has the potential to become a chronicle (a series that can be read in any order). Then, I’ll analyze the sales of that book to determine if it’ll be a good candidate or not. While I wait for the stats to build on the first book, I’ll write another book that could be another candidate. If the first book sells well, then I’ll write a second one for that chronicle, and so on. If it doesn’t sell well, then it’ll remain a stand-alone. I may end up with a dozen stand-alone books, but that’s OK. Eventually, I’m going to hit on something that generates a lot of interest.

Of course, there are a lot of other possibilities. Like The Traveler trilogy might become popular and I have plenty of material to extend that series to add more books. The best part about that story is that I don’t have to twist the story to jam in something else. It even has room for a prequel series. The Abyss has possibilities as well, but it’ll have to perform better than it has so far. I chalk up some of the lack of sales due to the fact that the series is unfinished. As I’ve mentioned before, the covers might be an issue as well. I’m still trying to decide if I want to commission a graphic artist to create new covers. I might wait until I have all the books written for the initial series. That way I can hire someone to do the whole set at once, and the covers will be consistent.

But first… I have to finish the trilogy. So, it’s back to my writing desk.