Thoughts on the end of this trilogy

...the hiatus...and the story to come...

About hiatus:
I'm thinking of taking a few days off, but probably won't because this is me we're talking about. eh, I'll try, but you guys have made the target and then some, so I feel obligated. Plus also the points stories can be pretty short; I aim for between 300-1000 words. And they actually help me flesh out back stories and understand the characters more, and that's going to be important in days to come.

So the schedule is going to be a story on Tuesday, one on Thursday, and a story on Sa if people meet the target. If it's okay with you, the Thursday story will be the Dr Who novella I wrote. I know, kinda lame, but I'm proud of it in a nerdy way.

I also encourage people to write sillyfic. Not fanfic. Please don't write History fanfic. Please. BUT! If you have fan art, or silly stories with the characters in them, please! I'd love to have them. The only one we currently have--and it's a doozy--is Three Quests, by Wysteria, the writer of Tapestry. If you're a serial novelist, this is a great way to get traffic for your site; I will pimp the hell out of you if you give me a sillyfic.

Last note on hiatus: I don't know how long it's going to be. I'm hoping I'll be done by the fall. I am terrified you'll all go away and there will be no audience left when I come back with the book (though I won't really be gone). So I'm very motivated to work hard on this and get it done, but I want to get it done right.

...and when I'm done...

Those of you who follow me on Twitter know I recently read Ignore Everybody. I cried through a lot of it, which would make the author confused; it's not a sad book. It's actually rather funny. I cried because it validated everything I've been thinking about lately--all the stuff that I've been told was impractical, or shocking, or stupid, or just plain impossible. He says ignore all those guys. Do what the small creative voice inside you tells you to do. Because if you don't, you kill the voice.

Being an indie/self-published writer is scary work. Theoretically, you're cut off from every traditional avenue of the writer; no publisher, no agent, no help with publicity, no editor, no designer. No one will review your work. You're almost literally an outcast. You don't do this lightly. But this is what the small voice told me to do. It's where I'm free to write the way I want to write. That doesn't mean writing badly (I hope). I want this to be as professional and well-written as it possibly can be, and if you guys like it, that is so wonderful. And if you don't, well, I'll keep working at it and get better. That's been my philosophy from the get-go.

When you're out here by yourself, though, it's easy to get tangled up in all the "shoulds." Because you're breaking so many rules already, it's easy to look toward the traditional and try to emulate it. You start worrying about branding, and marketing, and all that stuff, and how you shouldn't do this and shouldn't do that. And I'm not saying I won't think about branding and marketing.

But in getting in serious touch with that little voice, I've come back around to my original way of thinking about the story. It should be freely available to read online.

Oh, you're still going to have to pay for the ebook, or the paperback, or the audiobook, gods willing I should get it recorded. But when I'm done with book one, I'm going to come back here, take the draft down, and start putting the story back out again, an installment at a time, just as I did the first time around. If you want the whole story at once, you can buy the book(. Otherwise, you can wait for Tuesdays, and Saturdays if the target is reached. (Thursdays will remain points story days.) While book one is rolling out on the site, I'll be working on the rewrite of book two, and while book two rolls out, I'll be working on book three. While book three rolls out, I'll be working on the draft of book four. And so on. I ran this past the people who participated in the pre-sales, for fear they'd feel cheated, and all of the ones I've heard from are okay with it. So away we go.

I can tell you now that things in the final books are going to be different. The basic story will be the same, but the characters will be more fully developed (especially Tem), the world will be even more coherent (especially in book one, oy), and events will be reordered; stuff that happened in book one of the draft may show up instead as part of book two, etc. Some storylines will be dropped, and some of you will be mad about that, perhaps; some new ones will be introduced. It's going to be worth the journey, I sincerely hope, and I hope you take it with me.