Read the opening to Servant of a Dark God

Because of so many reader requests, I think it’s time to explain.

Alas, I must report that she ran off with a no-good tramp. I’m sure she’s realized her error. Either way, I’ve formed a posse. We’re hunting her down.

That’s the true story. For those that want the boring press release that obscures the facts, you may read what follows.

The first draft of Curse of a Dark God was delivered to the editor in August of 2009, two months before Servant of a Dark God was released. That draft had some issues with a few of the story lines. These issues crept (they did not run or slouch) into the text because the author, stressed about an aggressive deadline, decided to adopt the fix-it-when-you-finish-just-get-er-done-you’ve-got-a-freaking-deadline methodology of writing.

But a book of 230,000 words is a big old momma. And if something in a beginning chapter is off, it wankers a whole heck of a lot of story that follows, much like a line of dominoes. But it’s not just one story line. This book had multiple interconnected story lines. So issues in one line rippled out into others. What this meant was that the changes that needed to be made weren’t wee things that could be dealt with in a few weeks. When the dust settled, it was clear the book required a substantial rewrite, even though the draft contained gobs of cool story.

So much for that fix-it-later experiment. You can be sure the author won’t be using that on large books again.

So the author wrote another draft of 245,000 words and delivered it in August of 2010. The story rocked. Unfortunately, there was a miscommunication on size (and there’s no use in having a drama about what was said and who was at fault and why fairies are always tiny hot chicks; despite our best efforts, life is full of bumps; the best thing to do is learn from them and move forward). The book actually needed to be in the 170,000 – 180,000 word range. Same as Servant of a Dark God.

In a 10% edit, you’re tightening a story, cutting out the fluff. In an edit designed to reduce the book by 30% or more, you’re cutting off arms and legs and removing things like livers. The story can’t survive such cuts unless the thing was obese to begin with and just needed to go on a diet. Unfortunately, Curse of a Dark God draft 3 was fairly lean, given the amount of story it contained. It was NOT a candidate for Biggest Loser.

The upshot is this third draft is going to be another major rewrite. Which means, given publishing lead times, that it’s going to take a number of months to get it on the shelves.

(fricken, ricken, grumble, frag a friggen nack)

Because I’m just starting on the outline, we don’t have a delivery date yet. As soon as we do, I’ll post it.

I apologize to all of you expectantly looking forward to the next book. When I started this series, I promised myself that I would not leave my readers hanging. I was determined that my books would come out in a timely fashion. And I have been working like a devil to do just that, but sometimes things happen. What I can promise you is that this draft will go quickly. Furthermore, I already have book 3 outlined. It should go quickly as well.

I know some of you are asking why? Why, the word limit? Aren’t there are plenty of monster books out there?

There are. In fact, about half of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time books are roughly the length of draft 3. Publishers do sell fat books. However, the bigger the book, the harder it is to make it profitable.

First, bigger books cost more. There’s the cost of the additional paper and editing, but there’s also the extra money to ship and store.

Second, you can’t put as many copies out in the stores. You can’t because they take up more of the space that might be allotted to an individual book. So instead of being able to have stores stock four or five copies of a 120k novel, they can only stock two or three of a big old momma in that same space.

Third, bigger books cost you, dear reader, more money. Sure, the publisher might eat some of the additional costs, but some of those costs will be passed onto you.

So because of the increase in cost, the publisher needs to sell more copies; however, the limit on display space and the higher price make it harder to sell those additional copies and actually may lead to selling fewer copies.

Do you see the bind?

This doesn’t mean big books can’t be profitable. It just means that it’s not as easy. It’s a bigger risk. Part of me would want the publisher to take that risk. But the other part of me knows that slow and steady usually wins the race. Neither I nor the publisher want to gamble the long-term viability of the Dark God series. Now, if Tor was doing this all in paperback, this might not be such a big issue. But we’ve got the sweet hardback/paperback deal. And business projections have to be done in that world.

So the short of it is that we’ve run into some business limitations, and it’s going to take me a bit more time to deliver.

I wish I could announce a date at this time, but I can’t. I’ll finish up the outline for this draft and run that by the publisher around Christmas. Then it’s back to work. I promise that what you’ll get will be my best. And that’s what you want, anyway, even if it takes a bit longer to get it into your hands.