I'm happy to report
that work on The Lost Star's Sea is progressing nicely. I finished
the first draft of penultimate episode, Windvera, on the 24 Jan. and
it's second draft on the 31 Jan. I'm fairly happy with the section.
At least I'm happy I have something. Hopefully when I return to it
for the third draft in May or June I'll still find that I'll have
little to do. I've now started writing the concluding episode, The
Dragon Kings, which will wrap up not only The Lost Star's Sea, but
the adventures and misadventures of Wil Litang. I'm budgeting six
weeks for this section just to be on the safe side, since I want to
make sure I've tied up all the loose threads that I can while making
it as entertaining and as satisfying as possible, especially since it
will be more like the conclusion of a “Who done it” mystery
rather than the explosive climax of a thriller. I've got its broad
outline well in hand, and have started going over the scenes in my
head forming them and trying to put them into their proper place so
that everything gets covered, flows smoothly, and is not tedious. I
day dream up dozens of variations for every scene – and go over
them dozens of times before I write them. And then when I do try to
set them down in words, they usually come out differently again –
so that I have to rewrite parts of scenes, over and over to get them
as true as I can. It is not an efficient process, but a lot of the
fun is in thinking about scenes and viewing them over and over from
different angles. And then, when I have the words, going over and
over them to make them sound good, and clever.
As things stand now,
in the mid-March to early April time frame, I should be set to put
the final polish on three sections, now probably a year old from
first draft, and start the proof-reading process. I don't expect that
to take too long on my part, though getting them through the first
proof-read will take a week or so each, and then I'll send them out,
one at a time every 2-3 weeks to my beta and early readers. Assuming
all goes well, we're looking at a July – August release date. If
all goes well.
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