Update. Book 7. Serial novels.
Bite Back book 7, Queen of Diamonds, is with the editor. She has promised to get back to me this week. I am still hoping to publish this month (Dec 2020).
The book is 135,000 words long, which is pretty much standard for my main novels. It has taken me a little more than a year (so far) to produce, but I have had other projects running at the same time.
I’ve given lots of estimates out about the length of the Bite Back series. I started thinking I was writing a trilogy! At the extreme, I thought it would take me 16-18 books to tell the story. Currently, I think it’s 9 books long, so there will be at least two more.
While waiting for the edits, I’m working on the two serial novels I have running. These are for subscribers to my mailing list only, and have been going down a storm. The general idea is the same as the serial format I used in this blog, but the updates are bigger and only arrive monthly. Unfortunately, I had to skip last month’s episodes to get Queen of Diamonds to the editor, but I should be back with new episodes this month. The two novels are The Long Way Home (Science Fiction, set in the same universe as Among The Stars, but at an earlier time) and Stand Up (Urban Fantasy, loosely tied to Bite Back, and set in New York after the novella Change of Regime).
It’s comforting to hear it takes you that sort of time to write a 135K novel – with today’s urgency to write and publish super fast I often feel like a dinosaur, taking more than a year to write a novel, even when it is circa 135K words.
Yes, it’s something that is beginning to be debated. There are undoubtedly people who can write very well *and* very quickly, but I tend to think that those two characteristics both individually follow some kind of distribution curve – so that number is very much smaller than the number for people who can simply write very well. However the market is stacked in favour of writing quickly.
I’ve finally learned to accept I’m never going to be in the ‘quick writer’ category, my mind simply doesn’t work that way. I can do the physical writing quickly, it’s the plotting that takes time, and my best ideas surface from my subconscious at their own speed.
I’m much happier now I’m not beating myself up about it. Now that books don’t go out of print, it isn’t such a big deal to have a gap in production of a series. Even if current fans find it frustrating, there will always be new ones 😀
Gratz on wrapping up another one! Sorry I wasn’t more help as a beta reader…it’s been a year. I look forward to seeing the finished product. 🙂
Soon. Still waiting to hear from the editor.
Great news on the book !!! The cover is very attention grabbing. Makes me wonder if we will see more of her Adept side in the new book. Really curious to see how u weave your magic on what been hinted at in your serial.
Its about quality over quantity!!!
Ill be a happy camper if we get to see it before Christmas !! If not then at
least i know one good thing will be out next year !!!
Yes, Amber gets to explore Adept abilities. However, there’s one small problem with that….
🙂
Looks good, sounds good.
A year is pretty good for an indie author too; it’s easy to compare to just those few people who write 17 novels per year (all credit to them), but also keep in mind the many many many more who start a series and make big promises and then never ever manage to finish after a first and maybe a second book …
Well to be fair a lot of the writers that do the multiple novels a year that sell so much are like steven king who has a strict formula for how they write and never break it. After a bit though it begins to seem like your reading a checklist in some ways. One of the things I like about the bite back series is how the books “flow” so to speak.
Any updates ??
Sorry for the delay in posting new information. I am expecting the amended draft back within the week, and I will assess how much effort it then needs to move to publication.
We’re probably talking release a couple of weeks from now, so well within January.
Thanks for the update !! Looking forward to the book!!!
As a reader we are always awaiting the next book, but creative processes differ for everyone it’s the end product that counts!