With school season turning to summer, my schedule has opened up just a little bit, so it’s time for an update on progress.
Door to Altharia is still in the editing phase – gotta do it right! Basically, I’m formatting the manuscript for eBook and paperback while I wait on my beta readers to get me their feedback. This has been a fun part of the process, and their comments so far have been very helpful.
In the meantime, I’m excited to bring two very important announcements:
Announcement #1
I’ve decided on a name for the series: TRIALS OF THE HOPEBREATHER. Hooray!
Oh, and you read that right – “series.”
Announcement #2
Trials of the Hopebreather will be a six book series. Yup, six books.
Why? Well, I had a discussion with my students about book length, and when I mentioned that my first book would probably be around 300-350 pages, many faces fell, and quite a few students said something to the effect of, “Well, that’s just too long for me. I probably won’t be able to finish it.”
This reaction got me thinking. I may enjoy the length of J.R.R. Tolkien/Robert Jordan epics… but that doesn’t mean that my target audience feels the same way.
After doing a little research on the interwebs, I concluded that my students were right and I’d made a mistake. Young Adult novels usually range from 20K-50K words, with only a rare few venturing out into the 80K range. And if I look back at what was popular when I was a teen, this trend was observable then, too; stories like the Chronicles of Narnia, the Chronicles of Prydain, and the Earthsea Cycle were all around that length.
So, I examined my manuscript, considered my plot structure, and realized that I could make the necessary adjustments. In fact, given the busy nature of my work as a teacher, 50K words would probably work better for me as well.
If you’ve been following along from the beginning, you’ve seen DtA go from standalone novel -> trilogy -> six book series. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What can I say? I was young, naive, and apparently quite unrealistic… such is life. I’m still learning 🙂
Many warm thanks to you for your continued support along this way. In a week or so, I’ll be able to make public some really cool developments. So keep an eye out for that!
The road goes ever, ever on.
Martyn
