This is going to be a short update this month. I’ve been super busy, so there isn’t as much to talk about as I usually have.

I’m almost done with my preparation for book 1 of my second series. The working title of the book is Calling of the Sun. My plan is to do my first draft in May and June. Each of these books will be about the same length as the Blake Heira books. For reference, those are between 90,000 and 100,000 words per novel. That’s about the length of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, The Bone Collector by Jeffrey Deaver, or Fool Moon by Jim Butcher.

While I’m doing the first draft of a novel, I write between 1600 and 2500 words per day, averaging about 1800 words (yes, I calculated that). Assuming the maximum word count and average word count per day, it takes something like 56 days for me to write my first draft. The series is planned to be nine books long, so I’ll be writing this for a while.

I’ve sent Corruption of Blood to my editor. I was late getting it to her, which means she’s late getting it back to me. Since I’m planning on drafting for the next two months, actually implementing those edits will be pretty tough.

Again, this book is the same length as the others, but editing doesn’t take nearly as long as drafting does. Typically, I can do my whole book’s edits in about 7 days. Then I have to proofread it, which will take another 2 days. Formatting and putting the cover together will take an hour or so. Some of the technical stuff (ISBN purchase, and the like) will take another hour or so. Long story made longer, I’m looking to release Corruption of Blood in July.

I talked about my writing process in this blog post.

That’s what I have this month. Let me know what you think in the comments below. See you next Thursday.