It’s barely 10 days since I wrote my April writing update, where I was thinking about the next steps. Curse me for probably overthinking (again!) but I might be on the way to change (and maybe invalidate) what I mentioned then. It’s not a decision made yet, but I had enough of such thoughts where the decision happened anyway – like the one when I decided to pull out the intro of what was to become book 1 to standalone “book” #0,5, something I wrote about half a year ago.

So, what’s the fuss this time?

Long story short, #1 is in far better state than #0,5. This time I am confident that I’ll have it in beta state in Summer, though I still have no clue where I could start looking for potential beta readers, but I’ll do some research most likely in June (after my exams are done to avoid distractions, most likely). #0,5 still needs some names and other details sorted out – those that are not needed for #1.

How, then, could it go down in the new plan?

In best case, beta of #1 in Summer, meanwhile start looking for cover artist (I have general idea for cover of #1 and even #2) and if everything goes well, release in spring 2019 after some beta-stage edit passes. As for #0,5… that would in best case follow in later 2019 or early 2020 as side read revealing some backstory.

And this is where things get even more complicated. I am not even fully done with #0,5 and #1. I have first draft of #2 and at this point getting close to base of story for #3 which will close the trilogy (at this point I believe it won’t go over trilogy for the story I want to tell). The complication is that I had another idea (with working tag #0,6) that would happen shortly after #0,5 and deal with the creation of Magic-breakers (elite soldiers equipped to fight enemy wizards, about which I wrote some time ago as well) and story of how Shadowflame cult (secondary antagonist of the trilogy, heavily present in late #1 and most of #2) came to be. #0,6 would then be released after #2 as background for that part of the story.

Then, finally, #3 would follow. After that, I’d probably go way back to what could be pretty much standalone story about the life of Sagittus, who became an Eternal (for simplicity, consider him a demigod even though his powers are not even that) after his death and show some background lore for the Eternals (there’s 8 of them), the elven nobility and the Darkwood family (some of the main protagonists of the story). This is something I would probably not even number (otherwise it’d have to be something like #0,1) and at this point the concept is titled simply “Legend of Sagittus”.

This would get the total at a trilogy of long books (I guess they’ll all fall somewhere in the 200-250k words range), two (most likely) novellas somewhere around 40k words and one of which I have no idea yet considering length, as it is still very early concept stage. (Un)fortunately I have some more ideas that would go beyond the 6 pieces mentioned so far, but these won’t be shared anytime soon (most likely only when #3 is done).

If I went with this plan, the I guess the timing for letting my story out into the world would in ideal case look like this: #1 in early 2019, #0,5 in early 2020, #2 in 2021, #0,6 in 2022, #3 in 2023 and #0,1 in 2024-2025. Of course, that’s awfully lot of time in which anything could happen and throw the newest plan out of the window… again.

As for the “story timeline”, for now I’ll only say there’s long time gap between #0,1 and #0,5 and again long gap between #0,6 and #1-3. Long gap, in this case, means several generations.

I also believe than when this decision is done, I might finally be able to share a bit more than these unspecific posts, something that would touch the story, not just the writing process. Maybe talk about some characters and how they came to be or something… I really don’t know yet. Part of me would like to share more about it right now and other part is reluctant to mention even the title.

And that’s the end of today’s post.

I probably never stated this before, but I am always open to questions, discussion or comments, even though I realize that what I revealed so far is almost nothing to go on.