Orbital Space just turned into a four-book series.
After days of packing, repacking, and jumping up and down on the lid of the suitcase, I have come to the realization that all the events that have to happen between the first book of the series, and its conclusion, simply will not fit in one volume. Not without such drastic pruning that some events would summarized rather than told.
This requires some rethinking, and work, because a book isn't just X meters of story, cut from a longer cloth. It needs its own coherent arc and conclusion.
I sat down to write Volume 2 with enough ideas, in outlines, notes, and summaries, to make a full novel the size of Theft of Fire. As an extensive planner, I typically write 25K to 35K words the readers never see, just planning things out.
But you really can't sit down with your cup 100% full of ideas. Because in the writing, ideas turn into stories, and stories have unanticipated ramifications that only emerge in the writing. Full your cup in outline stage, and it will overflow when more is inevitably poured in.
I have, at this point, about 50K words, split evenly between very literal and polished text for some events, and masses of outlines, summaries, notes, scraps of things searching for a home.
The difference between 50K and the 155K that made up Theft of Fire may feel like plenty of breathing room. But it's not. Not for how much those notes imply.
It simply has to be split into volumes 2 and 3, with the planned conclusion bumped out to 4. This may result in slightly slimmer word counts for 2 and 3. At this point I simply do not know. But I usually end up having to trim my stories rather than pad them, so I suspect they will still be hefty tomes in the tradition of the first one.
I have some good notions for how to make one story into two sequential stories, rather than two halves of a corpse still bleeding in the middle from the axe blow, but I will need to return to the brainstorming and outlining process for a while before the writing of literal content can resume.
Already, I feel a sense of relief, as if some chapters and scenes which simply juggled too many objects can lay down their burdens, breathe a bit, and become what they were meant to be.
At the same time, I must ask for your patience. I may present an expert appearance from how I hit the mark on my first attempt, but this is still a very new profession for me, and the task of following up what I have done is a daunting one, especially as the tight scope of the tale's humble beginnings expand to subsume all of humanity.
Anyone can write 2K words a day if it's nothing more than "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". But if Theft of Fire gave you the impression that I agonize over each scene and sentence, polishing until I cannot think of any way to make it better... then that's only because that is exactly what I do.
I know that it's hard to be a reader nowdays, caught between tradpub agitprop, and indy shovelware, and that it's harder to wait a year for a next installment in 2023 than it was in earlier decades, when there were many fine stories to follow.
But all I can do it try to be a small part of the solution, not the whole thing.
So, if you're eagerly awaiting the next installment, thank you for your enthusiasm and your faith. If I disappoint you, it will not be through lack of effort. That's a hill I'm willing to die on.