An Autumn Veil: Nearing Completion

Current Word Count: ~192,000
Listening to: The Greatest Video Game Music 2
Playing: Bioshock Infinite
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I'm so close to being done that I can feel it. I can feel it like it's right...in my neck!

At some point in early 2013, I decided that I had made enough progress in Autumnveil (by the way, book one of the series is called Autumnveil now) and that I would no longer be posting random Facebook status updates with the current number of words. The next word count update, I proclaimed, would occur when the first draft of the novel was complete. This was on one level a point of pride: "Not until I've reached the summit shall ye hear from me again!" On the other hand, I was really tired of being told that my word count was over 9,000.

Okay, only partly tired.

So, I'm not done yet, and if you're paying attention to the date on this entry, you will see that it is July. What can I say? I plugged away ferociously during the first half of the spring 2013 semester, but once spring break was over, things really got kicked into high gear. The two one-credit courses I added tacked on about twelve hours of homework per week, and something had to give.

Now that I'm in Utah again and have had some free time, I've been able to start cranking out some words. The ten-week hiatus from serious addition to the story gave me plenty of time to reevaluate the most recent chapters, which I've told my friends is "very dialogue heavy." Taking a step back from a story is one of Stephen King's recommendations (or was it John Gardner's?) from On Writing (or was it On Becoming a Novelist?), and a good one, at that. When you write cyclically like I do, it takes about four years to write about 200,000 words, which some writers, by their own admission, could theoretically accomplish in a little over three months.

In any case, the story and I needed to take a break, and doing so helped me gain the perspective I needed to push past the difficult 48th chapter into the final climactic movement of the narrative in chapter fifty+. It's been a crazy ride, and while the end of book one is on the horizon, the end of the story is still on very distant shores.

As a treat, here is the (current) chapter listing.

BOOK 1: LYING AWAKE

Prologue: The Prose of Photius, Record One
1: The Autumn Garden
2: Midnight
3: Ghosts of Chimon-Jing
4: The Demon
5: The Conclave
6: What Friends are For
7: Helmsman's Folly
8: The Merchant Arcade
9: Miles from Mine
10: We Should be Sleeping
11: If the Stars are Willing
12: Broken Promises
13: The Only Life I've Ever Known
14: A Well to Draw From
15: What Tomorrow Holds
16: A Lovely Day
17: Revelations
18: City on the Winds
19: Storm Clouds
20: Event Horizon
21: To Reap a Whirlwind
22: Falling
23: The Heavens Remained Silent

BOOK 2: SOUL SLEEP

Interlude: The Prose of Photius, Record Two
24: Awakenings
25: Prison Cell(s)
26: The Voice on the Other Side
27: Greasers
28: The Knowledge of Good and Evil
29: A Letter from a Murderer
30: Into the Hinterlands
31: I am of the Gifted
32: Judsung Hollow
33: The Wrong Business
34: The Bridge of Noph
35: A Good Death

BOOK 3: AUTUMNVEIL

Interlude: The New Guy

36: Four Things

37: Sheol and All its Demons

38: Where I'll Stand

39: Puzzle Pieces and Pawn Coins

40: One of Us

41: The Talisman

42: Signed, an Anonymous Appreciator of Fine Mechanics

43: Which Way to Go

44: Fido's

45: Arcologies

46: Staying Dead

47: Lost and Found

48: A Threshold of Courage

49: Trembling in the Dark

50: The Whirlwind Within

51: The Nonagon Directive

If you've been with me this long, you've got my love.



-D