Curse of a dark god

Bow to the dark god, ye minions. Here’s some of what’s coming in book 2:

• The dogmen of Toth and their maulers
• The Ungar and the one they call Ruin
• The tanglewoods of the woodikin
• Firesteeds
• Gloryweaves
• Nashrud the hunter
• And last, but not least, the Orange-eyed priest of Mungo

The end is in sight on the first draft of book 2 in the Dark God series, and because this one has been a roller coaster, I had to post some of the coolness before I have to go back into frantic mode. My word count estimates for this book have been so consistently off it hasn’t been funny. Literally. It’s made me panic and stress. It should clock in around 220k. And then it’s going to be cut, cut, cut.

In the meantime…dogmen of Toth (give it the James Earl Jones).

Oh, baby.

Well, I’m less than 300 words from my original estimate of 140,000 words. The problem is that estimates are notoriously unreliable. Especially when most of the invention comes during the draft phase. It appears I have 20-30k more words. So I’m back down in the 80% finished range. But here’s my goal for completing. I hope to deliver it at somewhere around 170,000 words, maximum.

• April 20 -24: finish pre-climax story lines
• April 27 – 1: finish pre-climax story lines
• May 4 – 8: climax, finish
• May 11 – 15: revise
• May 18 – 22: revise
• May 25: deliver

BTW, let me tell you this story is exciting me–the giant dogmen of Toth that breed monstrous dogs called maulers, a tall insect like creature called ungar that are stealing souls for their magic, wurm fields, battles, mysteries, traitors, our first meeting of the woodikin and Harnock (the one bred by Lumen to be a superior warrior), a wonderful sleth called Eresh who was completely unplanned and completely delightful, plus some incredibly delicious character situations.

Oh, baby. This one is shaping up with all sorts of delights. Of course, if I don’t execute, readers will just see it as a mess. So it’s back to work.

You’ll note the word count on CODG is steadily rising. Today, I experienced a delightful AND maddening turn.

I find outlines to be immensely useful tools for story development. Of course, there are many more tools in the box–outlines can’t do everything. For example, there are times when you’re drafting a story that you write something and it suddenly generates new options for the story that you in no way could have imagined without getting to that point in the draft. You can get a lot of ideas with an outline, but drafts generate still more. Sometimes the options that present themselves while you’re drafting are so right they give you goosebumps. I got one of those today. Of course, part of why it was so good was not only that it put the character in a perfect dilemma and the reader in a perfect chapter cliffhanger, but also because it was completely unexpected yet logical. 

This all sounds so good, right? Well, the story turn was so unexpected, it startled me. It’s thrown my outline off. Which means I’m going to have to now revise the working outline. I was tempted to make the story fit. After all, I DO have a deadline. But this story turn is so freaking juicy that I cannot justify the hackery. Besides, working outlines are made for revision.

I’m riding by the seat of my pants today folks, and it’s exciting. I think readers are going to love this turn.