June has been an unreasonably productive month for me in terms of writing. This may be my magnum opus in terms of output thus far. I've stormed away at writing Shards of Lisgrimir, book 2 in my long-form fantasy trilogy, and my novella, Imperial Gold, is pretty much done. It even has a blurb.

Imperial Gold by George William Rolls

Stardon's Empire fell almost forty years ago, sending Berusia into chaos. Countless successor kingdoms failed and gave way to lawlessness. From their ashes, warlords vie for domination over vast swaths of imperial land, while others are satisfied with little.

In this Land of a Thousand Empires, even in a small backwater town, the story is no different. Gozane sits on the precipice between two warring factions, each seeking an edge over the other.

Three friends navigate this dangerous landscape, hoping to remain uninvolved. But when one among them finds a store of untarnished imperial weapons, staying out of the fray is a lot easier said than done.

"Better than The Gallic Wars." - Gaius Julius Caesar.

"Incredible. 5 Stars." - Elizabeth I.

"Mind-blowing." - Abraham Lincoln.

"Sehr gut." - Angela Merkel.

With recommendations like that, you must be dying to read it!

On a more serious note, I'm reasonably proud of my novella, and am now in possession of my alpha reader's (my fiancée's) comments. I'm pleased to announce that she liked it.

I've previously touted the idea of releasing Imperial Gold on this blog and I had every intention to do so. The snag in this plan is twofold.

1 - The Fear.

I'm sure that just about everyone can relate to the daunting prospect of letting someone consume what you've produced. For creatives, this could be a new book, a new song, a new artwork. For others, it may be presenting something to a client, or to your boss.

I'm nervous about letting strangers pore through my book. I've said it before, but I've never shown my work to strangers before. It's taking some mental gymnastics to prepare myself to do it.

2 - The Length.

What if my readers forget the things that happen earlier in the book by the time they reach the end?

In a novella, there isn't much room to lay groundwork. More often than not, people devour them in one or two sittings. This is indeed what my fiancée, Kate, did. She therefore didn't have an issue remembering everything.

But I planned on releasing my novella chapter by chapter. By design, readers will have gaps between reading sessions (provided they read them when they come out.)

A solution would be to release it all at once, but this would remove the need to come back to my blog - which was the point of releasing it bit by bit.

Alternatively, I could release the chapters in chunks, reducing the number of reading sessions. OR, I could write recaps at the start of each chapter. I'm a bit at a loss for this, so I'm delaying its release.

Comment if you have a preference - I might create a Facebook poll for this too.

A fifth of a novel - possibly.

Concerning the progress made on Shards of Lisgrimir, here's how I did in June. I wrote 14 chapters to a total word count of 30,555 That's an average of 1,018 words per day.

I thought SoL would end up being around 150,000 words, so if that's true, I've got a fifth of a novel on my hands. If I maintained this pace, I would have a draft before the end of the year. Considering I expected this draft to take basically twice that long, this is insane for me.

I've helped myself do this by building up a strict discipline for when I write. It's one of the first things I do when I wake up, and one of the first things I do when I finish work.

So, how's the book itself going?

It feels like I'm spinning plates a lot of the time. I've landed myself with more Point-of-View (POV) characters than I probably would have liked, but now can't really delete any of them without losing key aspects of the plot. (This story takes place across two continents). I've even added 2 more POVs than in the first book, so now I have 7 plates to juggle.

The plan I wrote in March has been extremely helpful in this. I'm certainly becoming more of an outliner than a discovery writer (i.e. making it up as you go along).

I always find fight and battle scenes the hardest to write. I open this book with one of them and it took me ages to get through it. I thought it made sense for that character to be doing it, and feel it sets the tone for her overall arc. More are coming up later, which I'm sort of dreading, but that won't be for a while yet.

I've also changed a key character relationship, one which was quite different in my plan. I haven't made someone's dad their son or anything, but I've changed the dynamic, and how the characters feel about each other. What was originally going to be an amicable professional friendship is now a tense, untrusting alliance.

I almost had an eureka moment with this, as this tension will let me do something more interesting with another character later on.

What's up with July?

I would be too hard on myself if I expected to maintain my progress, but I'm going to give it a try. July will see me stressing about my August wedding, so my mind may be elsewhere. It might also see the release of Imperial Gold, which would take some pressure off my back, as I wouldn't have to write these blog posts.

Next week, I'm treating you to my review of House of Chains, the fourth book in the infamous Malazan Book of the Fallen series. I'm planning something a little more light-hearted for the week after - something like ranking of the books I've read so far in 2021. Maybe a dumb tier list. Stay safe, and enjoy the sunshine. (While it lasts).

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