Devon's response to "you wrote a will-they-wont-they prince and the pauper in space and there's no part 2 yet low blow"
Yep.
Thing is, if you kick in the kitchen door early, there's no cake. Just a bunch of flour and raw eggs and sugar and maybe some orange peel.
Here's a raw truth from the secret world of authors: the second novel is a lot harder than the first.
You have to adjust from writing in private, speculatively, with no distractions, to writing as a public figure, with a lot of incoming expectations, and the additional burden of trying to market yourself.
And typically you're trying to write something a little more challenging and complex.
And then, just when you're getting a handle on all that, your wife gets cancer.
I think that part may not be quite the standard experience. Maybe the last part is just me, but it's a thing that happened, and we only recently found out that she's going to live.
So, it's been a long time since the last one, approaching two years. I feel this very keenly, and some days the only thing that had kept me from beating my head against a wall is the memory of a few kind words from @nealasher and @monsterhunter45, who are veterans of the struggle and understand what I'm going through.
So this is maybe a harder task than you might realize.
But your perspective is fair. I made a commitment to write more story, and tell fans that you owe them nothing is a dick move worthy of disgusting narcissists like George Martin.
What I have right now, behind that kitchen door, is the structure of a complete story, about half of which exists as summaries and outlines of scenes, and the other half of which is completely written. Some of it's the best stuff I've ever written.
I've shared the whole story with people who are part of my circle of insiders, such as my editor, @fyrewede, and they tell me it's really good. Some days I even believe them.
But I'm not a machine, like @monsterhunter45
, who can simply plant his ass in a chair, day after day, and bang out 1,000 - 2,000 words with a workmanlike discipline, be content with what he just did, sleep, and do it the next day.
I cannot possibly express how much I envy that superpower.
My writing process is a sort of perfectionistic turmoil which would make the prima donnas of the opera world look askance at me and tell me to chill the fuck out.
I'm working on it every day, but the more I worry about it being late (by my own standard of late), the less productive the chaos is.
Unlike other (former) novelists with HBO series and millions of dollars, I actually care about this. It eats at me. I am ashamed of myself.
But I don't know any magic way to make this process less fraught, or faster, or smoother.
I just have to keep struggling through.
One thing I can promise you, is that when the sequel arrives, it absolutely will not suck. I'm agonizing over every word.