ALMOST DONE!!!

… not with the next book, unfortunately, but with this endless scholarly project that’s been bogging me down for almost a year. I have a complete working draft, and I expect to send it off within a week. Once that’s done, I can finally get back to the remaining two parts of Volume 4.

4.2 (The Chapterhouse of Elith) is basically done, but everyone who’s read it finds it so dense and embedded (in the sense that everyone talks as though the people they’re talking to already know what they’re talking about) that it’s very hard to follow. I re-read it and realized that there’s not enough description, and above all not enough internal monologue from Avren, who’s our POV character and also our point of entry into this strange, insular, almost incestuous situation.

4.3 (The Dancer) got started but then bogged down because it didn’t have any shape or concept. I mean, I know the plot—actually, I know the plot in a lot more detail than I often do! But a novel has to have a conceptual structure, a voice in which the tale wants to be told, and I couldn’t seem to put my finger on that, so everything I wrote started to go flat and stale and unprofitable (to coin a phrase). But I’ve thought of something, quite recently, and as soon as this current project is complete I’m going to start sketching.

With luck, you can expect Chapterhouse in January and Dancer in February. Maybe March, but I’m planning to write overtime to make up for being so dilatory (nice word!) over the last 9 months. Guess I was pregnant with the scholarly book or something.

After that comes V.5, The Dark King, where I know almost everything except one little (crucial) plot twist. I’m hoping for April-May on that one, but it’s going to be on the long side. In any event, the plan is that by June at the latest, Swords In Darkness will be complete.

Thanks for your patience!