Outpost Report | September Round-up

Edits, overwriting, and attrition: The price of vigilance.

LUMICRON WARNING | KRAN EMPIRE—THE DEEP
SEISMIC ACTIVITY DETECTED…
Entity Classification: En Rohg Guhl Suhr
Power level … Catastrophic

For the past two weeks, I’ve been running silent and deep. Sometimes it feels glacial, but it’s not standing still. The hard part’s just getting started. We’re past the point of mercy. Let’s see the blood of it.

Author Announcement: October 14th, there’s an author interview with fellow authors at a local book shop in San Antonio: The Twig. If you’re in the area, hope to see you there!

The Demon’s Fate: The revised book and its new cover are now available for world-wide preorder on all major platforms. It will go live Oct 15th. For those of you that shop on Amazon, you can order it now—the original publication site.

Decimation Protocol: I’ve been tackling this one chapter a day for the fifth and final draft. While seemingly as slow as watching paint dry, there’s a lot that goes into the fifth draft to make it polished for the editor. I have various tools to catch all the big stuff, and when Jon gets it in England, he does the final proofread. This method has helped take the editing and final product to a higher level than in my early days, hence all the revisions coming out.

Currently finished the 8^th chapter of 40, and each chapter takes 2–3 hours, and that’s if I’m able to work nonstop.

Vol I: This has turned far more invasive than I originally thought. During my early days, I overwrote by a far margin. Now, it’s either taking what’s already there and cutting it down, or removing surplus that has no added bonus to its inclusion.

For context, when I finished the first draft of Vol IV, I finished at 402,000 words. That’s two Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with some to spare. By the end of the fourth draft, I’d whittled it to around 272,000, and the fifth draft isn’t far off…

So, taking what I’ve learned since the original publication, I’m trying to streamline, taking into account any valid criticism in reviews: “Immersive but wordy.” The first 13 chapters, I’ve cut to the bone, keeping everything that makes the story move, the depth of the characters, but trimming the fat. Now that the reader can get knee-deep at a faster rate, I can pull back on gutting and let the world come to life.

Depending on chapter length, I can get 1–2 done a day, so long as I’m not swamped with other things. I’m also doing a different layout within, geared more towards the style of Maro Prakk books, which helps with pace, breaking paragraphs into more digestible bites.

I have several paperback copies of the first run edition, and what I might do is set up a website where you can order a signed book for at cost of the printing (around $7.00) + shipping and handling. You can still get the immersive, deeper experience while supplies last. We’ll see how that unfolds. Drop a comment below if that’s something you’re interested in.

Well, the gods have spoken, and it’s not up to us to interpret, but to understand. That’s all I got for this round—short, sharp, and sweet. I shall return…