A Few General Updates

Hello,

It's been awhile since I mentioned anything concrete on the work I've been doing. So I thought I'd take a moment to deliver some updates in that regard and also talk a bit about what's coming up on the blog.

Layout


First things first, I hope everyone has had a chance to notice and appreciate the new features over on the right-hand column. If you haven't, please look over there now. Don't worry, I'll wait.

...

Okay, do you see it now? Good.

I have a progress bar! I'm really excited about this, as it means that I can share my progress with you each day/week as I update the bar, instead of making you wait for one of my infrequent updates hidden amidst my ramblings. In the future, if all you want to know is how I am along in one of my projects (or just my work overall), you can just stop in and glance at the progress bar. As i mentioned above I will be updating this thing regularly. Hopefully every day as I finish my writing sessions, but sometimes I'm a little slow. At the very least, I will update the progress bar every Monday, just to make sure it's up-to-date.

In addition, I have a "Currently Geeking" section. This is just a short list of the various items that I have either been interested in lately or that have consumed my time lately. I'll be updating this one a bit less frequently than the progress bar, but I hope to keep it changing regularly in order to let you all know what I'm wasting my time on and what I think other people should be wasting their time on as well.

(Plus, it's probably a good bet that if something shows up on the "Currently Geeking" thread, I'll likely be talking about it in the near future either here or over on The Vanishing Blog. Fair warning.)

Now, on to the actual updates.



Godchild
-Anticipated total word count: 1,000,000
-Expected word count for book one: 110,000


You may notice that, as of today, I have two separate progress bars for Godchild. One is tracking my (estimated) progress on the project as a whole, which, as I've mentioned before, is quite ambitious. The new one, however, is an indication of how far along I am on the current "book." ("Book" being a very loose term as this stage as I'm intending to finish writing the entire project before seeking publication on any one installment. At this point, I'm just estimating where I think the natural breaks in the story could/should occur while still giving each installment a reasonable length.)

In addition to this separation, the most exciting news is that I'm almost finished with Book One of Godchild. It should clock in between 100k and 120k for the first draft, depending on how many additional subplots I work in. This means that I should be finishing it before returning to the States in June. (But I'm not going to make any promises.) At a current count of 76,187 words, Godchild is already the longest manuscript I've ever written, and reaching the 100k mark on it will be a major accomplishment.

A Tree in Times Square
-Anticipated total word count: 40,000


So, as you may have noticed (if you've been paying attention to the progress bars), A Tree in Times Square hasn't really made much progress lately. And I most certainly did not meet my goal of finishing the book in the month of March. (March, on the whole, was somewhat disappointing, but that's neither here nor there.)

This is for several reasons. Mainly, I don't know how to write YA yet. It's been years since I really read YA in any kind of consistent or dedicated manner. I remember enjoying the snappy pacing and episodic installments that the kind of YA I read delivered, but I haven't given them a glance for a long time. As a result, I don't understand the genre as well as I do epic fantasy and others. Thus, I am ill-equipped to write a YA novel, even though I want to. Thus, I need to return home, devour some YAs, and return to the book after that. I still think it has promise, but after writing through the first act, it was easily apparent that I need to rethink the structure of the book from the ground up. When I do that, I'll continue onward. Until then, I'm moving it to the "Postponed" bin.

Powers of Their Own (tentative title)
-Anticipated total word count: ???
-Expected word count for book one: 30,000


I don't really want to say too much about this project yet, except that (like almost all of them) I'm really excited about it. At a conceptual level, this series is kind of an intelligent tribute to the anime that I enjoyed watching as a young man. In execution, I hope that it will be far more than that. Right now, though, I'm just having a blast watching the progress bar shoot up so quickly. We'll see if I can keep the production going on this.

The Tramp and the Aristocrat
-Anticipated total word count: 120,000


Yes, it's still postponed right now, but I've had a number of developmental breakthroughs with how I want to approach its rewrite, so seeing a new draft of the project could happen sooner than I thought. I've got plans to expand the scope of the story, while still keeping the core dualistic relationship as the centerpiece of the book. I'm really starting to look forward to working on this project again, as it will really be a chance to showcase to myself how much I've learned in the two years since I first wrote it.

Godslayers
-Anticipated total word count: 500,000


Not to be a tease, but I came very close to starting work on this project again last month. Unfortunately, not enough came together during a brief flurry of activity for me to justify adding this to my plate with everything else. Rest assured, though, I do plan on returning to this project before the end of the year. It is highly unlikely that I will come anywhere close to finishing it by the end of the year, but we'll see.

The Blog


Alright, now for a few pieces of personal news and a couple promises.

First, I'm going to be travelling hardcore for the next two weeks. A brief tour in France and Italy during Easter break before returning to work on final assignments. As a result, I will be largely inaccessible for that time period. Which, of course, means that I will have difficulty writing and updating the blog. Expect to see me back in full force by the start of May.

Second, I'm going to commit -- right here and right now -- to getting a new post up here every Monday. If I'm able to write more than that, I will. But I want you to be able to expect something out of me and not simply hope that I throw some rambling post up here from time to time. So, there you are. Check here on Monday, every Monday, to see something new. Check back more often if you want to take the chance that I might have posted something, or just to see how my progress is coming.

I hope that all this news hasn't left you bewildered or apathetic. Please let me know what you think in the comments below, and let me know if there are any other features I can include to make this more worth your time.