Not Lu here: Notice the following in the image below. Sipper cup – check. Comfy jammies – check. Warm socks – check. Phone and thumbs for writing book 2 in Common Among Gods – check.
Justan just gave me the good news that he’s written 176,000 words and 28 chapters in book 2 of Common Among Gods. You can imagine my delight that he’s over 40% of the way done… except he probably isn’t.
The little bastard followed up his, “Oh, I’m such a good author. I’ve written 176,000 words in so little time!” with, “But I think there’s a problem. I’m not even to the half way point yet. I don’t see how the book will be less than 600,000 words.”
I promptly gave him a beating and sent him to his room without dinner, in part to nurse his wounds but, mostly to think about disciplining himself and just getting book 2 done.
When he emerged from isolation and humiliation I asked him if he could tell me what he did wrong (that’s our rule for getting out after being sent to your room – no time limit – just come out when you can explain your failure in detail). His response was, “I know it’s too much, but it’s all really good stuff.” Yeah, right. As if any of us believes that!
But being the better person that I am, I decided I’d listen and see if he could explain his problem. It turns out that in ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SIX THOUSAND WORDS (about 75% longer than most books), the neerdowell spawn hasn’t even gotten Sybil out of the university and looking for Just. “Seriously? Isn’t that kind of the promise of book 2?” I asked.
“Well, Null has to do some stuff first. And Jem has to do some stuff with Wilt. And Bell has to do some stuff with Just. And Lu has to do some stuff that messes up the stuff everyone else is trying to do. Plus the Mother and maybe Fate. And I have to find a way to build Magistrate Godahn because he wasn’t really a player in book 1. And I’m not sure what the promise is yet because I don’t know how it ends yet. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”
At this point, I gave up and said, “Well, we’ll just have to do what we did with Death’s Merchant. You just write it the way you want, using as many words as it takes, then we’ll send it out to your beta readers, they’ll tell you how bad it sucks, then you’ll strip out what you have to, then add what you have to to make it readable.”
“Sounds like a good plan. Can I come out of my room now?” he responded.
So, with all that said, he’s 43% done if he can keep it to around 400,000 words, 35% done if it’s 500,000 words, and 29% done if it’s 600,000 words. All I can say is it’s a good thing all you epic fantasy readers like big ass books.
Oh, yeah, if you haven’t read Death’s Merchant yet you can get it here. Or here are some free stories that lead into Death’s Merchant.
