Book Five, The Problem Child

Okay, no that's not the title, but I almost think it should be.

Book five in some ways has been very hard to write and full of troubles. Not just the book itself, mind you. But events and circumstances that have surrounded my writing it. And no, this is not a 'the book is going to be way late' posts, I actually passed 60K words last night. It's just that at this time, I have no idea right now how long it -will- be.

Let's back up a bit, just to put things in context. Book Four was really supposed to be Book Five, that is, some of the overarching story arcs (and there are a couple) were supposed to be 'progressed' in Book Four. But I had to alter a few things, and change a couple of things plot wise when I got to the finer details, and suddenly what was supposed to be a short segment had to become a much longer one and some things couldn't be addressed and hence they got pushed back to Book Five.

As some of you may remember, when Book Four was being wrapped up and prepared for final edit and review, my Father died unexpectedly. As I live on the far side of the country, AND I wasn't even home at the time, but was a twelve-hour drive from home, it had a huge effect on the schedule, as well as my life. If any of you have ever had to deal with an unexpected death in the family, you know that there are family issues, as well as legal issues, that continue for months afterwards. I've had to travel back east a second time since then to help deal with those issues, and all of that has Book Five about a month behind schedule. Which is why I'm now working twelve to fourteen hour days to try and get it to everyone when I said I would.

I'd also determined early on, that I wanted Book Five to be a bit longer, about twenty pages longer. In part because I want to keep my readers happy, and in part because there was a lot I wanted to put into this story, there was a lot of ground and plot points I want to cover.

So last night I'm sitting there, and I'm in the middle of a major act in the book, and I'm starting to estimate how many words will it take me to finish the act, figuring out what I need to cover and about how much space that will take. And then I start thinking about the next (and final) act in this installment. And I realized that I'm gonna go long. I'm not sure how long, I could easily go a lot longer than I really want to, hell I could go forty thousand more words long if I'm not careful!

So I started wondering if maybe I should make Book Five a two-part episode thing? But then, not only would that be messing with the initial concept and even the title of this book, but it means I'd have to immediately start on the next one, or the complaints about leaving everybody hanging could turn into people (figuratively) knocking on my door and yelling at me.

And none of us want that, right? Right?

So yeah, I wanted to have the first draft done in two more days, and I'm starting to think that it's probably going to be more like a week, and I'll be spending another weekend working. I won't know just how long it will be, or will take, until I'm about halfway through the next act. But I should know by Friday.

So, all in all, this book in the series has been a problem child, with much conspiring against it. I will be incredibly happy when it's finally finished, edited, and published.

-John