It’s amazing how quickly time keeps slipping by…but it’s been a while so let’s have another update!  So several things are going on simultaneously:

• Writing book #4 – Scheduled to be finished by mid-November
• Beta test for book #1 – Run by Robin ending November 24th
• Contests for limited edition advanced reading copies of Rhune

Writing book #4 has been going well. I was a bit stumped for awhile, and needed to figure out a major aspect of the Elan’s origin. After much deliberation, my muse finally coughed up that hairball (which should have been obvious to me, but wasn’t). With that taken care of I now have some good news and bad news.

The good news is the story was elevated to a whole new level…the bad news, I have a lot more to write. I’ve been tracking toward that mid-November finish date, and Scrivener does a nice job at that. I anticipated the novel would be about 110,000 – 120,000 words long (same size as the other books int he series). With that as a baseline Scrivener has been telling me how many words I must reach each day to stay on deadline. Currently, I’m at 91,000 words and the 110,000 I plugged in says I’ll easily make it.

Now the bad news. I’m nowhere near the end of the book. My latest revelation added a whole new aspect that is practically a book in itself…and actually depending on how I write it could mean that the series will once more expand to another book. At this point, I can see pluses and minuses for both. Robin is opting for two books – because that means book #4 will be done “on schedule,” and she’s been less than patient when it comes to waiting for her next installment.

In any case, either I’m going to have a MUCH larger book for the last volume…or this trilogy is going to morph into five books rather than four.  I’ll keep you updated on that front.

Now to beta read.

To be honest, I don’t know a lot about what’s going on there as Robin gives me all beta feedback at once. But we have had some discussions over lunch about various aspects that have been brought up. Some of it (actually most of it) has been related to things I already suspected would be a problem…too light on description. Tweaking some scenes. The good news is no one is suggesting a whole rewrite or removing key characters or anything that I would consider major changes. Everything is falling into the “tweak” category, a good sign.

The beta readers are doing surveys and providing feedback after reading each chapter. They are being asked to comment on things such as pacing, characters, what they liked, what they didn’t like, what surprised them, what was confusing, etc., etc.  So far, she has almost 500 chapter surveys in and nine people have completed reading the full book.  She’s been ill as of late, and as such is behind on compiling the beta feedback. She’s been able to work just a bit the last few days, and that has started to put a dent in it.

Also, we are down to the last week of the ARC Giveaways.  For those that don’t know, I’m going to do a micro print run of Rhune in it’s beta state (10 copies), and I’m giving away 5 in various giveaways.  We have about a week left and if you’ve not signed up for them, you should.  They are open to people from all countries.  Here are links for those who haven’t yet signed up.

• Goodreads – 4,500+ people signed up – yikes!~
• My giveaway – much better odds 650+ people signed up

You can sign up for both.

Well, that’s pretty much where we are now. It’s starting to feel like everything is coming together, and I think (and hope) that you all will enjoy this series.