Faith from Goodreads asked me about my intentions regarding the number of books in the series, and I realized I haven’t actually laid this out anywhere, so I’ll do that.

Given that this is a story that spans a thousand years or more, I have the notion that for any particular time period, there still needs to be decent closure. I know well the nuisance of waiting for something to resolve over decades, or of dealing with a story that simply has no end. I think one can tell a long, epic, interconnected tale and still have good resting points, and to that end I intend to write the series in “arcs of three”.

What I mean by that is that each arc will cover the events of a specific time period, and probably be three books of moderate size, say 100k-150k words or thereabouts. That’s how this first arc is planned and being delivered, and I think that’s the right length to be able to develop a quality product and release on a relatively timely schedule. The characters of one arc may or may not be prominent in another, but their story within their arc will resolve as best as possible within the larger conflict. The larger conflict will remain, as this is a saga spanning many generations. There will certainly still be questions readers will have, but those questions won’t be cliffhanger cheese that by the time you hear the resolution, you don’t actually care anymore. They will be more broad, like “What will happen to Nihlos in the future” versus “I wonder if Ahmed will somehow avoid being melted in the lava he was falling toward when the last arc ended.”

The next arc will be set roughly 20 years after the resolution of WGW, and I certainly intend to do a full arc for the Great War in the past, so that is at least 9 books. The future story line might expand into two arcs, depending on how I decide to go with things, and could bring it to 12, but that remains to be seen. No current plan for anything beyond that, though there is plenty of room for stories in the millennium between those two times, so plenty of space for more if I change my mind.

Let’s call it the Agile method of book series development: the project will grow over time, but I intend to try to make regular deliverables that will function well on their own.

So, time to get really cranking on “The War God’s Will”. It’s about 90% plotted out in very detailed synopsis form (which is basically all of the action and dialog with pretty much no scene description or inner voices, just vague notes for expansion in final form (because that’s how I roll, I writes the book before I writes the book, you see). The missing 10% is the finale, which used to exist but got chopped off because A) it didn’t really feel right, and B) a key player did not survive the final version “Mad God’s Muse” and thus it’s broken. Don’t get me wrong. I know how it ends, basically. It’s the little things, the connections, the symmetry of plot points, that’s the last bit I am working up, and those propagate backwards….

That being said, it’s pretty solid, and a number of chapters are at first draft status. I think I am well on target for making the first quarter 2017 schedule.

You know what really pisses me off? Ghouls. Not the D&D kind, but real life parasites that try to profit from the dead. My friend Paul Steed was buried four years ago. Love him or hate him, Paul contributed much to the games industry, and he personally convinced me to push on with my writing.

I never had the heart to take him off my Skype. I am furious that subhuman spammers have taken to sending me links on his account. It’s despicable.

Elgar take the people responsible. May their deaths be legendary, and recorded by a Knight of Fear.