I can remember getting my syllabi (yeah, I just used an awesome plural word) on the first week of every semester in college. It always felt a bit overwhelming to see the papers I would have to write over the next four months. I'd have six or seven classes with a paper or two for each one. The "big" assignments were ten pagers. I'd usually have one or two a those per semester. Add up all the pages for every class and you'd get 30-60 pages. How was a guy supposed to do that and work twelve hours/week at the campus post office plus play basketball and/or ping-pong every night? (I went to Bible college so "partying" was defined a bit differently for us.) The point is, life was really hard back then. Good thing I have more free time to write these days.
I thought about those stressful collegiate days quite a bit as the pages of my book started to add up over the last few weeks. My deadline was 5:00 today and I'm proud to say that I turned in my homework 6 minutes early. Now the editing begins. The content editor will read it and suggest ways for me to fix the story itself. I'm actually excited about that part, though it certainly has potential to be a bit painful. After that it goes to the copy editor who fixes the grammar, spelling, textual errors, etc. My childhood friend Laura Derico was asked to copy edit, so that's kind of a cool side story to all of this.
The title is still tentative, but I decided on the following for now: The Basiped Chronicles - Book One: The Long Night. The evil enemies of my heroes call them "basipeds" though I never explain what it means. You closet etymologists can figure it out.
Here are the stats if you are into that: 36 chapters, 242 pages, 52,162 words.
It may all change, but that's where we are now.
Standard Publishing has been wonderfully supportive thus far. Best I can tell, this is their first fiction title, or at least the first in recent memory. That speaks to me about their faith in the story. I'm excited to work with them to create something meaningful.
You have certain days in your life when you realize that you are fulfilling a dream. Today was one of them.
3 comments:
damn, thats a lot longer than i thought. well good luck man, i hope it is such a joy to story it up. well done.
Well done ~ always a joy to see people fulfill a dream. And a double toast to all those who helped you along the way.
Congratulations! I have loved the writing ever since I heard the Tale of 2 Kingdoms podcasts from Lifelines. I listen to the Lifelines podcasts over and over, and these were 2 of my favorites. I always wondered what would happen once they got in by way of the river...
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