After taking some time off over the summer, it is back to the coal face now that the days are getting shorter.
I have finished writing Scorpius (well, nearly finished), coming in at a whopping +120,000 words. This is the longest story I have ever written, and I have to say that I enjoyed every minute of doing it.
I am going to let Scorpius sit and marinate, and will probably come back to it toward the end of the year to add a couple of chapters, and then I will leave it alone for a long while, and come back to it about this time next year.
I am working on The Sphinx’s Tear at the moment, reading it through, changing things, adding things, and giving the story a good polish before I publish it in October. This editing / polishing process is a little different this time, as I wrote The Sphinx’s Tear quite a while ago, and reading my work from then, now, feels quite strange.
I have enjoyed this process so far, seeing the small changes between what I was writing and how I was writing from an earlier period. I read somewhere (I cannot remember where?) that the ideal time to start writing and finish writing a book is three months. Any longer than this, and there is a danger that the person a writer was when they started the book, and when they finished it, might be two very different people.
I have also been working on the map for The Sphinx’s Tear and have drawn something I am quite pleased with. The map features all of the main centres of activity (Port Umbralis, Hymetonese, Balqarith, Maashaq, and Nebber) for the stories The Sphinx’s Tear, Scorpius, and a fair amount of Age of Magic. I have modelled the map on the Mediterranean (without Italy/Rome). I might make a few changes, but it will be quite small. The map is below.
That’s all for September. Have fun!
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