I’ve had a break for a couple weeks, and it’s now time for me to think about my plan for moving forward with this series. At this stage there are a couple immediate things to consider:
- The next books, A Charm for the Nameless Child, is complete as a first draft, but I suspect it is going to need some heavy editing before it is ready to publish. I’m considering putting it up online a chapter at a time, one per week. However, if you are interested in reading the current draft, please feel free to email me at hobgoodfellowe@gmail.com, and I’ll send you a copy in whatever format you like. There’s no need for feedback, but, if you did have any thoughts I’ll be happy to consider integrating them into the final edits.
- I guess I should also say that it was strongly negative workshop feedback on A Charm for the Nameless Child that threw me into a state of hardly writing and barely even reading (from about 2016 to present). I don’t have a lot of faith that the book is very good, or even readable, but I also understand that the workshop group may have simply had different tastes, and not been very good at disentangling personal taste from critical, objective assessment. Also, I suspect one or two persons in the group subscribed to the idea that workshops need to be eviscerating to be useful, which I definitely do not think is healthy (for anyone involved).
- The novella length A Treasure of Bone & Promises and The House of Snow and Apples are getting little to no traction either via Smashwords or Amazon. I really think I simply made a mistake by writing these to novella length. Fantasy readers are not that interested in novellas. They were supposed to be the next big thing, but they have not panned out that way. I’m of two minds about how to deal with this. On the one hand, I can see ways in which I could expand both books into novels that would actually help underpin the series and enrich the world (a lot). On the other hand, going back to expand both books would very much be a step backwards. This is something I need to think over. It’s possible that while publishing A Charm for the Nameless Child in partial chunks, I can draft some extra words for both the first two books. I guess there’s a lot to think over here. I’m really not sure what the best path to take is.
- Finally, I’d actually started on The Kingdom at Midnight (after A Charm for the Nameless Child), but it is in such an early state, it shouldn’t be considered a complete draft. I think there’s about 40,000 words in The Kingdom at Midnight, so my other option is to edit and complete that book while releasing A Charm for the Nameless Child.
- Finally, finally, I’d like to arrange for Old Dark Things to get a professional edit and purchase some professional cover art. I’m considering entering it in the Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off, but it really needs some professional attention first.
At any rate, if you did want to read the current draft of A Charm for the Nameless Child (keeping in mind that it will probably go through some moderate editing still), feel free to drop me an email and let me know what format you’d prefer.