PUBLISHING DIARY: Oops! I started writing a new book! Okay, probably not a common complaint for most people. I get it, but yep, it’s happened! I started, as stated in my last blog, using a new (to me) editor called Scrivener with the intention of rewriting a short story named “Aris Five.” I thought it might be one of a series of little stories that filled the gap between my final book of the Thurian Saga’s main arc and whatever developed next. Yeah, it so didn’t work out that way!
That original story was a whopping eight pages in its initial form. So, as I started writing, I realized I wanted to put more detail in, more characters, more story. I thought that this would mean the story would be like Feasting on Memories or Reconciliations of Chance, which are longer works but have multiple chapters. Still, they aren’t incredibly huge. Yeah, I was wrong about this one.
With Scrivener, I was able to storyboard sections and then write out each scene, which was great. However, there was only one problem: Scrivener doesn’t give you page numbers as you go. It shows you the number of words and characters in a section. That’s perfectly understandable as it sends its output to eBook, PDF, manuscript, and few other formats where page numbers would either vary or not matter very much. However, the absence of that ever-present pages status in the corner of a program like Microsoft Word sort of just let me write as much as I wanted to write in a section, and … now I have about a hundred pages in my short story – a far cry from eight.
So, what to do? Walk away from the experiment and try something else? Well, I don’t feel good about that. There is some meat here, and I have been enjoying writing on this new world – one quite different from Thuria but touched with some of the characters of the previous books. If I want to salvage what I have and use some of it, what part would be best? Well, I think I’m sort of writing the critical middle of a three part story. It could basically be outlined as part one as history, part two as transformation, and part three is coming to terms with those transformations in the long run.
So, decisions, decisions. And, what’s the decision? Well, book 11 in the Thurian Saga universe will be Legacy of Aris, and just for fun, here is a sketch of the new race from the upcoming book!
Sketches by Kat Miller
In the meantime, Conversion is still being reviewed, and the editors appear to be around 70 – 80 percent done with it. After that will come the process of internalizing the changes into the manuscript and then generating both an eBook and a print version of the same. I’ll probably start my own review of Ascension immediately after and make it available to them, as it would be awesome to get another book out this year. Then, all of the focus can shift to Aris!
Thanks for coming along for the ride, and see you in the future! Also, have questions about the books? I love answering them! Just send the Thurian Saga a message on Facebook!
JTL