In the spirit of full disclosure, here's where I am at:
My first manuscript took nine months to complete. Since I am a planning-heavy writer, a "first manuscript" is fairly mature, and ready for beta reads, then line editing.
If I get more practiced at this, I hope to hit a pace of one book a year. However, Box of Trouble will probably take somewhat longer than that.
Why?
Because it turned into two books.
My self-imposed standards of quality simply will not allow me to chop a book in half, with threads dangling, and call it two books. Each sequel must have complete arcs, and a satisfying conclusion.
When I realized I had to split Box of Trouble, I lost about 25K words which got bumped to the third book. In addition, I had to stop and return to the planning phase to figure out a restructure.
I'm just now getting my head around how I need to shuffle the pieces, so that's about two months additional planning time, plus another 10K words that must rewritten. 35K words is maybe a month and a half for me. So call it about 3½ months total.
That would probably push me to sometime Q1 of 2025, if beta reads and editing go smoothly.
I know you don't want to wait that long. But I will not sacrifice quality to volume.
The reason so many of my readers start reviews with "I haven't read SF in over a decade" is that the current indy market wisdom is "publish every 3-4 months.
A book written in 3-4 months is a book that makes folks like you gradually stop reading science fiction. I have friends in the author community, great people who I really like, with whom I can't talk about their work, because I secretly believe they are writing trash.
They're not dumb or untalented. They are capable of far better, but they have been incentivized to write trash.
It's an invisible tragedy.
Me?
I'm a stubborn, disagreeable person, and I am not willing to do this thing. I have to write the best novel I am capable of. I would rather go back to writing flight control software for missiles than suffer the humiliation of putting out a book that isn't the absolute best I am capable of.
So I am literally betting my career on your patience and taste.
I know that my approach to writing leaves you with nothing to read for long periods. But you must understand that I alone am not, cannot be, the solution to desert of good books, topped by a flood of trash.
If we are to return to an era where everything on the bookstore shelf is at least readable, like it was in the 70s and 80s, then other authors must join me in rejecting fast food novel-writing and embrace a higher standard of quality.
Which they will only do if I am wildly successful.
I must make them sit up and take notice. I must make them abandon "20 to 50K", and start believing that I represent a better way.
If I am sitting here five years from now with three or four books to my name, an intact integrity, and as much money as I would have made from working those five years in a car wash, then I will have failed, no one will follow suit, and you will have nothing to read but "Third-person-past-tense-space-marines shoot aliens, volume #37", and, god help you, litRPG.
But if you, yes you, keep spreading the word, and I cross the boundary from "wildly successful compared to other indy-author unknowns" to "wildly successful period", then others may sit up and take notice, and abandon the awful, but semi-lucrative, Church of Indy Shovelware.
And then you will have other authors to read while you wait for me to finish agonizing over exactly how Miranda's thoughts sound in first person.
In short, I want to be the anti-George Martin. He destroyed the careers of other authors. I want to make inspire new ones and undo the damage he did.
I am a tiny seed... but I dream of forests.