There has been the slightest, tiniest, minutest tweak to the last change of plans

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Okay so maybe that last post was a little premature. I waited to publish it for like a week in case I changed my mind on working on To Dance With Monsters, turns out what I needed to wait was a week and three days.

It isn't exactly that I've decided to not write it. Because of course I'm going to write it someday. It isn't even that I'm saying I'm not going to write it this year. That I haven't decided yet.

I left room in my writing schedule to start one unplanned project in 2021. All of my other projects have been mapped out this year, but I have room for one more. And I'm just not sure if TDWM is going to be that one project that comes in and sweeps me away and I sell my soul to like RLtG was for me last year (honestly it still is very much my passion project I love Ruskhazar with my whole heart but now the difference is, it is actually a planned project, I'm even publishing its prequel novella in less than two months!). So yeah, I'm pulling back on TDWM because I realized I wasn't sure it was going to be that one unplanned project. I have a few other story ideas bouncing around in my brain that are warring with TDWM for WIP supremacy. Honestly I don't have a clue which will win, I suppose only time will tell.

Heck, if I'm still this undecided when the time draws near to start the dang project I might actually put it up to a poll to see what you the reader would like to see the most.

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But for now... it's one day until NaNo. So here is my new and revised NaNo goal:

65,000 words or more

Four projects whose progress will all be counted toward this goal

It's slightly more of a word count than traditional NaNo but divided (probably knowing me, unevenly) across four projects instead of just the one

So we shall see how far we actually get in any of them and which projects I end up writing the most in (my money is on AWDAD, but sometimes I surprise myself)

The projects are as follows:

A Winter Dark and Deadly

Rage Like the Gods

An Immortal's Guide to Betraying the Gods

Of Stars and Shadows

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Yes indeed I am finally starting Of Stars and Shadows again, and not waiting till AWDAD is finished before I do it either. I figured while I worked to try and figure out what this ever elusive unplanned WIP will be, I could in the very least get some words pounded out on OGaI's sequel seeing as it needs to get written before this October.

Anyway, hopefully this is the last change of NaNo plans, seeing as NaNo is tomorrow. But I think it will be. These four projects are stories that I both want and need to write and have well established plots already. I'm particularly excited to get back into writing Immortal's Guide and OSaS.

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As I said in the last post I shall try to keep you up to date on these now four projects through next month. I'm excited to see how far I will get in these stories.

What about you? Are you doing NaNo, if so I would love to hear about your projects. Which of these four projects are you anticipating the most? Comment Below!

Psyche there has been a change of plans, but I'm sure that none of your are surprised at this point

Okay so first of all, I just realized that most of the titles of my last several posts all had the term "in which" in them. So I labeled the moment when I noticed that "In which I realized that I like in which too much" XD

So yeah...

But anyway, I'm sure you guys are probably wondering what the change of plans is. No worries, Between Gods and Demigods is still getting published, A Winter Dark and Deadly is still getting edited, and Rage Like the Gods is still getting written.

Just maybe not by May for the latter two.

I started thinking about how May would look and I realized a scary thing. If I plowed through both RLtG and AWDAD in this month then come May I would be starting RLtG book two Folly of the Gods and Of Stars of Shadows. I had always been intending to pick up another project in May once Between Gods and Demigods was published. That would leave me with three brand new stories, four counting Immortal's Guide.

And then I realized that absolutely all of my current projects would be under 20k words long and I would probably die.

(the one I would be farthest along in currently is OSaS, but that is only 11k long)

So you better believe I pumped the brakes and reexamined my goals, and worked toward figuring out how to avert this crisis. (because I very much did not want to lose the remaining bit of sanity I had left).

 I decided that trying to finish RLtG and AWDAD at the same time was not the best idea. And since AWDAD is the next book after Between Gods and Demigods that needs to be published I'm afraid that is going to be my key focus (honestly I haven't blogged about it for a little while but it is coming along so nicely and I can't believe I am saying that after all the trouble this story has given me, but it really is developing very well and I'm very excited for what comes next). This is purely conjecture at this point but my soft goal (and one that I think is quite reasonable) is to have it done by June. 

Focusing on AWDAD means not trying to write 110k in a month and a half, at least not in RLtG. I'm still going to be working on it, just not putting so much energy into trying to finish it and get it wrapped up (I am extremely eager for book two but I must wait for now and I suppose this is what I get for writing such a long book)

What then will my Camp NaNo project be? Because honestly, I would be slightly worried that I was kidnapped by aliens and replaced by a bot or shapeshifter if I skipped a NaNo (and for future reference you should be too). I just love the challenge of doing them so much.

Well that is phase two of the plan to not go completely insane. Since I have already finished all of the edits I can currently do on Between Gods and Demigods I have decided to pick up the project I was going to start in May. Early. That way I will be farther along in it when I do start OSaS and FoTG instead of starting three projects at roughly the same time.

My NaNo goal is to write about 65k in my three projects RLtG, AWDAD, and this new story (and to be fair in AWDAD's case it will be editing those words not writing them)

So... what is this new project, you are probably wondering?

I'm so glad you asked.

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It's actually a story I came up with in 2019, but never fully fleshed out so I put it down till a later date to work on. Apparently this is that later date.

It's called To Dance With Monsters and it's a Little Red Riding Hood fantasy horror novel. The first in a duology. I have a blurb so you can read what it is about yourself.

With one touch Amber Dearg could kill a grown man. It’s an unfortunate curse that has plagued her since she was a young child. Due to her abnormality, Amber has lived as an outcast with her mother and grandmother as her only forms of human contact since her father abandoned them. She provides for the three of them by means of common thievery. Pinching a coin purse, swiping a loaf of bread. You name it, Amber has done it. But when a trip out of town goes awry, she finds herself face to face with a werewolf and captured by the king’s men.

Taken to a manor in the middle of nowhere, Amber discovers that it is a safe haven for others like her, the Magic Touched. Young people born with magic in a world where it is banned. The powers of the Magic Touched may vary but one thing rings true for them all… they’re barely human.

Amber doesn’t trust that this manor is the home for the lost that it seems to be. Someone appears to be trying to force these children to embrace their feral abilities. Madness is only a breath away from them all. Then there is her fellow inmate Gavin, a self-professing werewolf, who only complicates matters with his secrets. The clock is ticking down until the werewolf awakens again. When it does Amber will be more than just a victim of circumstance. This time she’s its target.

Who can you trust when everyone is a monster?

So there you have it, a brief introduction to To Dance With Monsters and a change in plans. I shall try to keep you all appraised of the progress I am making in all three of my stories next month. Good luck! And happy NaNo-ing (for those of you doing it of course)

In which I realize that it is Camp NaNo next month and decide to make my goal the next-to-impossible task to finish RLtG in less than two months

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So yeah, I'm pretty sure that extremely long title says it all. But I'm sure I'll find something to ramble about in this post anyway.

Camp NaNo is in like two weeks. I have to admit, it snuck up on me. I wasn't prepared. And as I was trying to figure out just which project I should work on, I decided that it was about time I finally finished Rage Like the Gods. I've been working on it for about nine months and am crazy impatient to move on to book two, so I thought why not?

A crazy, crazy idea, especially since I will still be working on my novellas (I'm planning on publishing the prequel Between Gods and Demigods this May so edits need to be done) and AWDAD. I am willing to put Immortal's Guide and LoT on the backburner for two months, though.

What's so crazy about it well... it's time for me to get a little geeky and drone on about word counts.

The current word count for RLtG, 111,991

Divided up it looks a bit like this.

Eirik: 40,028, almost to the climax, maybe it will be wrapped up in 10,000-15,000 words

Thyre: 25,236, hit its midpoint twist so about halfway done

Dagmy: 20,358, hit its midpoint twist so about halfway done

Meruna: 25,083, almost to the midpoint twist

Azern: 1,286 (her POV is complicated since it is directly tied to Thyre's and Meruna's both so I'm working on getting more of theirs written before I work on hers. I don't think it will be quite as long as the other POVs, probably more about half their lengths)

So at first glance 111k is a good solid number. It's about how long Of Gold and Iron was. Looking at my other published novels, Week of Werewolves was 115k, A Certain Sort of Madness was 120k, and Time of Trepidation 130k.Which are all pretty decent word counts for books ranging about 300-400 pages long. The longest books I have written (SoS and AWDAD) are not published yet, but they were both around 150k words long.

By the standards of how long my books tend to be that would mean that I would have about 40k words left to write tops. which I could easily do in a month and a half.

Unfortunately (for my sanity, but yay for you for getting a lot of time to connect with the characters) I do not think that RLtG is going to be 150k words long.

I've been saying this for a while, but I suspect RLtG is going to be a very long book. I don't know if I have ever said quite how long, but here are my suspicions:

Eirik is the POV I am farthest along in and getting pretty close to finishing so at this point I am going to go out and say that he is going to be about 50k words long, maybe longer but for the sake of not overcomplicating my already overcomplicated word count guesstimator (aka my brain) we will just stick with about 50k.

My other POVs are very likely going to be as long as Eirik's POV, give or take 10k. That's still 40-50k for each POV. That's four POVs coming in at 50k. Then with Azern we'll say she is 20k which is about the middle ground of my 15-25k estimation for her POV length and you do all the math and add those 50ks up and that equals well, it equals about 220k words

220,000

It could be just 200,000 or it could end up being 260,000 (worst case scenario and POVs end up dragging for longer than I originally anticipated), but I honestly don't think it will be shorter than 200k, not with everything I still have to write.

(to get even more technical for those of you wondering just how big of a book that would be, if RLtG ends up being twice the size of OGaI which is 308 pages long, then it would be over 600 pages O_O)

Which would make my 111k only the halfway mark and that means I have to write another 110k in a month and a half in order to be done at the time that I so desire.

And that is the impossible goal I have decided to work on.

Thank you for joining me down my rabbit hole, I will probably be blogging less (or maybe more, the wonders of procrastination) in the next month and a half, but Between Gods and Demigods should be getting a cover reveal in that time period and you aren't going to want to miss that. As an unrelated side note this is my first NaNo going without coffee seeing as I had to give it up due to health reasons so all I can say is... this must be what insanity feels like.

To make a long post short, this is all just my best guess work. I don't actually have any way of knowing just how long RLtG will be until I finish it. Which I am going to try to do before May.

Emphasis on the try.

I know that Yoda would be disappointed in me for simply trying, but if I do really have another 100k to go well... I honest to goodness don't think I will make it. I shall endeavor to all the same, who knows maybe I will surprise myself. I'm curious to see how far I will get.

*gulps*

Bring it.