Working on Book Two...

I'm reading through the second book, or rather the second half of the whole book of Kane, and I'm on chapter 40. I'm running into the part of the book where I had skipped ahead because I didn't know how to write out a certain section and I wanted to keep moving. But then I went back and filled in the missing section, so now I need to review the last few chapters to make sure they fit with what I wrote; it wouldn't do to have two characters meet for the first time when they actually met two chapters earlier. That would be awkward.

I worked on this book back when I was doing a lot of writing in 2020. I actually got this far into the whole book (about eighty chapters or so at the time) by March or April. But I wasn't able to afford a cover artist at the time, and I really wanted to get a professional cover. That will have to wait for now, but I was tired of waiting to get the actual book out. And since I've gotten some very nice compliments on the cover art for Crimson Moon, I saw no reason not to go with that artwork on the book and get it published. It was the same with Apprentice, the Shadowmage book, although the cover art for that is a bit less on-point than I might like.

So, what to do for the next book? I'll need another cover, obviously, and I haven't started looking for it just yet. I hope I get lucky like I did for the first book. If not...well, I'll come up with something.

When I was deciding how to publish the entirety of the story, I debated whether I should cut the book in two or three parts. In the end, I went with two, since the end of Part IV was a natural break in the story. I mean, there are several natural breaks; the first book does cover about forty years, after all, and there are very long skips in time in there. I mean, I could have broken this up into five or six smaller books if I really wanted to, but that seemed excessive.

The thing about writing a book in multiple parts like this is that there are several climactic sequences, not just one big one at the end. There are seven parts to this book, and each one has its climax, followed by a denouement, and possibly an interlude before moving on to the next part. But the whole story is so connected that splitting it up would have taken away from the story's impact.

My thought right now is to get the second book done and published by the end of February (an easy goal to achieve, assuming I can get cover art that fits), and then do a hardcover of the whole story as one book. After all, a hardcover is expected to be thick and full these days.

In the meantime, though, I still have to finish the second book, and there's already one out there to be read. Check it out, and by the time you're done reading it, the next book should be ready to go.