Germination
8-24-25
As of about a week ago, I’ve started to water the seeds of my newest novel. This one is going to be yet another departure from the ones that have come before it, both narratively and most importantly lengthwise. My last two stories I’ve tried to keep to the maximum allowed for new authors breaking in, and have gone over that limit two-fold both times now. So, this one I am approaching with a rigidity I’ve never had before.
I am, I would say, maybe an 85% pantser, with my outlining only being a brief paragraph or two at the beginning of each chapter as the general ideas of what the chapter is to accomplish come to me. However, I don’t always do this. But this new novel, this new one I am going to outline more than I’ve ever done, and I’m going to get the story told in 300 pages.
There is a part of me that really dislikes this constriction that trad publishing has on new authors, although, I completely understand why it is the way it is. You have to prove yourself as a writer and a seller of your books before you are allowed to take larger risks, that’s just how it is with business in general. You prove that you can not only tell a story concisely but competently, but that you can sell that story too, and then one day you will be able to publish that 1000 page novel.
Keeping this blog brief (as I’m learning to cut word counts) I just wanted to share the news that the seed of yet another novel has been planted. This one is another within the Gatherer’s Bounty series, as my last one was set in my other series Shifting Memory. It’s going to be nice to return here, as this universe and series is one that I always enjoy fleshing out the corners of more, and this one in particular I’m getting to explore a time and situation that I never have had the opportunity to yet.
As always, you, dearest readers are the refining hammer that’s hot and hard strikes ring out over a village that’s still being erected, that’s instruments still require attention in order to reach their true potential. You’re the life within an otherwise uninhabited and silent township, as marred and obscured as it is quaint and homely.
JMB
