Currently drafting the end of book 3

I know you all like to be kept in the loop, so I'm updating my blog just to say I'm still typing along. As of 2 minutes ago I crossed the 100,000 word mark in my draft, which is a pretty cool landmark. That's about 30 of my chapters, with 5 left to go according to my outline. For reference, most books in this subgenre on Amazon run 70,000-90,000 words, so we're already ahead of the curve (page count is all messed up on Amazon. Audiobook length is your best guess, with 10,000 words being roughly 1 hour of spoken audio.)

Other authors are smart to publish at that length. Publishing more frequently keeps your Author rank higher and your books more visible, so I'm kinda dumb to write such long books. I take more time to write a book and my Author rank plummets further between books because of it. I'm convinced book 2 never quite hit book 1's sales figures because I took too long in publishing. Those of you interested in graphs or Amazon's behind-the-scenes system can feast your eyes on this image of my author rank, posted below.

That's right, I am currently the 17,992'th most popular author on Amazon! At least for now... that will inevitably continue to fall until I release a new book. And the fall will grow steeper and faster the longer I take.

But I'm not writing novels to optimize my sales, and at this point I've committed to a certain style of story for this series, and I want to stick to that style for consistency's sake. So businessy common-sense must give way to my true goal of telling the stories I want to tell.

That being said, the additional income from having a side-hustle like this has enabled me to replace my boiled potato and stolen french fry dinner with home-cooked baked salmon and grilled brussel sprouts. I'm rather fond of this change and would like it to continue. So, I may eventually launch a side series that's better designed for being an author here on Amazon. Most authors who write longer works tend to have shorter stories as well to flesh out their portfolio, which is something I've considered doing as well.

It would also be helpful to my own psyche. Should a second series of mine succeed independent of the Spellheart series, it would prove that I'm actually a moderately competent story-crafter and not just somebody who stumbled upon an interesting premise for a first book that will inevitably wither and die.

At the same time I don't want to hold up or slow down the Spellheart series, but I am sitting on most of a manuscript that I'd already written when Zeal of the Mind and Flesh took off... Decisions, decisions...

Anyhow, those are my hungry rambles as I wait for my brussel sprouts to finish grilling. We shall see if I feel the same once I am full.

TLDR; Book 3 is nearly ready to move into the editing phase, I've started thinking about where I'm going from here.

Currently about halfway done with Book 3

I hit 60,000 for book 3 sometime last night. Book 1 was around 120,000 words, and I'm hoping to keep this one around the same length. So I'm very roughly going to say I'm halfway done, given the assumption that editing the draft into something publishable takes about as long as outlining the story and dealing with post-release book 2 stuff took (about a month and a half).

Truthfully, I'm a bit behind my own schedule. I ran into some trouble at 50,000 words and I had to reoutline a large part of the story from the middle onwards and remake all my character sheets. Hopefully that trouble is behind us and it's smooth sailing until The End.

So that's the news. I'm about halfway done with book 3, which I'm tentatively calling Memories of the Reborn. I'm really, really hoping nobody nabs that title between now and publication.

Book 3 will be the conclusion to the Hearthwood Forest arc. Afterwards, you'll all get to explore the Queendom and eventually the rest of the elven world. I may also release a new series at some point between books 3 and 4 while I'm busy revamping my outline for the next arc. I was working on a cool world-hopper story when Zeal of the Mind and Flesh came out, so I may polish that up as a more actiony title that I can write whenever the Spellheart series starts giving me trouble. It does explore some of the Ten Thousand Worlds which we may never get to see in the Spellheart series.

Exciting things are happening! I try to respond to all comments, so leave one below if you have something to say.