BeerBoy 1 calling Beerboy Mothership, Come In Mothership!!!

Hi!...Here is an update on the progress of my novel.  Or what will end up being a 2 or 3 book series.  I've been working on the book series for around 4 1/2 years.

The book has taken awhile to write because of a few factors. One was learning the novel style, 3rd person limited narrative. Another was doing about 2 years of research, not all at once, but in segments. And, there is the factor of making an original Gothic style horror fantasy world. Instead of doing another vampire or werewolf story( though I do like those genres), and being able to use the previously-developed-by-other-authors-mechanics of the science of those worlds, I have to make my own. I will do, say, 6-10 hours of problem solving with paper and pen to get 2-3 single space typed pages for the book.

I've had 5 great weeks of writing on my book, averaging 10 1/2 single space pages a week. I've been able to stretch my writing schedule, and suspect I'm also getting more used to writing in the novel format: 3rd person limited narrative. The last week I typed 11 1/2 single space pages, and the week before that 12. I'm over 119,000 words. I'm working on the climax scene, nearing the halfway point of that scene, so I'm getting close to the end of this draft, the 7th draft. I'm guessing the 8th draft will get the story between 300,000 - 500,000 words.  That's why I see this project being published as at least 2 books, maybe 3.

 

The ending of the book will be determined with the 7th draft.  All these extra words I'm talking about will be used to flesh out the story.

The 7th draft is the first where I had the foundation of the story laid wide enough that I had enough momentum to carry through to the ending. I've had the mechanics of the ending for quite a while, though. So, with the 7th draft I'll have the spine laid.

With each draft the story gets deeper, and is taking on a life of it's own. I've also figured out how to get romance and sex into the book without being explicit. It's what I'm calling 'alchemical sex'. I've wrote 6 emails testing the subject, sent them to 2 women, and gotten very good responses.

I'm receiving advice on the writing from a  published dark fiction novelist.

I want this story to have lots of action, and romance, to cover the various demographic groups. In 8th and following drafts I'll be working on that, and beef up the scariness. The 7th has huge holes in character development and plot, but just wanted to get all the way through to the end...

Lots of elements for game design are being put in the books

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