It’s been a while since I’ve done any kind of update and since I’ve had a few questions recently about the sequel to The Last Grand Master, I figured I’d post something. My goal is to try to do these once a month, so if you’re interested, keep an eye out.

The Eye and the Arm – Champion Of The Gods Book 2:

This one has bedeviled me some.  When I originally wrote COTG it was going to be a 4 books series.  The original Books 2-4 were about 550K words unedited so they would roughly end up between 300-350 words.  But those are not the appropriate numbers in the publishing world I’ve learned. 120K is about the max a publisher will accept – a bit more if  necessary and justified.  The problem was I had about 40K left over from the original Book 1 when I submitted The Last Grand Master. There was no way I could condense 600K into 120.

No problem, you say. Just break it into smaller books, right?  Wrong.

Every book, even sequels in a series, needs a beginning, middle and an end.  There still needs to be conflict, tension and a resolution. Think Harry Potter. Each book had it’s own adventure and dilemma to resolve, while the overarching Voldemort plot line continued for the series.  The original COTG Book 2 had all those elements, but the resolution came toward the end. So that required a MAJOR rewrite.  Major. Trying to create an enjoyable Book 2, with all the needed elements, AND not mucking with the story line too much in 120K words has proven incredibly difficult.  Much harder than writing a new book from scratch.

The good news is I think I’ve finally managed to clear the creative hurled that has held this up. I’d say I’m about 80% through with the rewrite and that just leaves the serious editing of the rest of the rough draft. And, the rest of the books should prove easier to break up into smaller chunks without a major rewrite. Which is a long way of saying the major blockage – the rewrite of the middle of Book 2 – is almost cleared away. I’m hopeful that by the next WIP- Update in September, I’ll have more definitive information to share.

Purpose:

Sorry to all who have asked but there is no sequel planned.  The reasons are many, but the two main ones are: lack of a good story and lack of sales. At present I have an outline of an idea for a sequel, but it’s not fully formed. More to the point it is much more of an action/adventure plot than the requisite romance that seems to be required in the genre.  But the bigger issue is sales or more properly, a general lack of them. I’m not sure at this point if a publisher would take a sequel given the limited sales Purpose saw.  Yes, those who read it seemed to enjoy it quite a lot, but it never took off and sales were sluggish at best.  So for now, no sequel. Maybe I’ll dabble with a novella or short story. Perhaps that would generate some more interest in the book and it would than be worthy of a sequel.

Other Stuff:

Right now I have a paranormal and two contemporary stories in partial stages of doneness.  I hate giving out plot specifics on a story, so I won’t, but for the two contemporary stories, I’m about 5 chapters into each and the paranormal, I’ve written about 7 chapters.  All need some work, but when I get stuck on The Eye And The Arm, I generally turn to work on one of these.  My goal is to finish The Eye And The Arm before I focus on anything else too seriously.

Two other things:

1) Wednesday briefs. I’m planning to continue them for the time being. Not sure it will be every week, but I’ll try to do it most weeks.

2) The other thing I’m toying with is to rework Second Shot and turn into two smaller books. If I do this, I’m not sure what to do with them – either give them away for free or perhaps list them on Amazon for .99 cents as a way to generate more name recognition. I’ve no firm plans yet on whether I’ll do it, but it is something I’ve been considering. Maybe I’ll keep that in my back pocket for those days when I can’t seem to write anything new.

Questions, comments or even criticism is welcome.

-AQG