Okay, if you’ve been wondering where I have been since my last December blog post, the answer is WRITING! Between the middle of November and today, the twelfth book in The Thurian Saga has come to be! Not more than five minutes ago, I put the last words of Enemy Deity into the manuscript. This one will be slightly different in structure, as there are twenty one chapters with no introduction or epilogue(s).
If you haven’t been able to tell or haven’t noticed, in nearly every book I try to change some aspect of the structure or the approach. With Legacy of Aris, (coming out this spring, God willing), I went with a 1 – 7 – 7 – 7 – 1 format, with one introduction, seven chapters in each of three major sections, all followed by one epilogue at the end. Sometimes, I’ve used time-stamps in different places to give readers an idea when events were happening. Sometimes, I’ve used introductory media reports to help set the “larger world” stage of the book before diving back down into detailed action. At other times, I’ve used diary entries. It’s fun to change things up!
So, in this book, there are only the twenty one chapters. I also have to confess that this is part of my slowly successful attempt to write shorter works. The truth that I’m having to face, however, is that I really like the longer stories. So, I suppose this will be a bit of a balancing act for me. I will also give away one little spoiler and say this this is the only book I’ve written to date where humans have a reasonably large part. They had a pretty minor part in the last book, Legacy, but here it’s bigger. It probably won’t stay that way, but there were a lot of fun “sci-fi” tropes to play around with and turn on their heads.
Anyway, thank you for your patience, and I’m looking at ways to get the books to market more professionally and quicker than in the past. Thank you to everyone who has read one of my books, and a special thank you goes out to those who have helped me with them! You are all awesome!
Thank you, and see you in the future!
JTL