Shadow of an Empire News! · 7:46am Jul 20th, 2016
So ... just minutes ago, I typed out the final line of Shadow of an Empire.
That's right. It's done. After 14 straight hours of writing (one hour of which was finishing this week's BaBW) and 13,000 words, Shadow of an Empire is officially a complete Alpha 1 draft.
Tomorrow, I will celebrate. Sands, I'll do that right now! But it's finally DONE!
So, some final numbers for those curious.
Final Wordcount: 254,272 words. 1,392,081 characters. 17,176 lines of text, with 6,348 paragraphs. Calculated out, that gives a rough page estimate of somewhere between 769 pages (using Amazon's rough estimate) to 1,016 (using a different publisher's estimate).
Timecount: I started midway into March, so ... five months. Which is a little slower than average for me (but still above and beyond most writers; I may just be a little proud of this), but considering I've had a second, part-time job for three of those months, this is still pretty good. That's an average of 14,100 words per week (again, with a second job; boo-yah!). I have no idea how many hours were spent at this. I almost don't want to know.
Release window: And now the kicker. Here's the goal: This year, before Thankgiving.
Tough? Sands, yes. But as of right now, I'm not starting any new writing projects (which would be Jungle, for those curious) until I get first Colony and then Shadow of an Empire released. Which means starting Thursday (tomorrow I celebrate), I plan hit Colony like a truck and go until it's done. Alpha 2? Done. Beta 1? Done. Beta 2? Done ... and publish!
Anyway, my hands hurt, so I'll give you more updates as they come!
At least it is done, and we have a lovely thing to look forward to.
Congratulations!
And that's when the hard drive backups failed.
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Well, depending if he also has a GDocs back up. I dunno.
Grats!
And I thought Beyond the Borderlands had a lot of characters to keep track of.
Congratulations!
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YYYYUUUUOOOO ....
I literally went and made a back-up out of sheer, paranoid fear after you posted this.
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Glad I could help. :D
A new story to look forward to! YAY!
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I don't blame you. When I really want to save something, it is on my computer on my cloud. If something is important, back it up. I had the lesson reinforced more than a decade ago (and why I did not lose my term paper for my pre-AP class).
Congratulations on another story done! Off to the editing stages!
But I see a lot of names bandied about, so please pardon my short-term memory: which stories are Jungle and Colony again?
Congrats!
(What's Jungle?)
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Answering both of you at the same time since you both asked similar questions.
Colony is the next release you'll see from me. It's a science-fiction space opera epic that revolves around three different individuals hired to track down a computer programmer who retired and left for one of Earth's colony worlds, a watery-world called Pisces. It's about 325,000 words in its Alpha 2 form, or between a little over 1000 to 1300 pages in print depending on the publisher. This is the story where I just wanted to get a lot of action, ramp it all up, and throw it in a blender. And then have the blender blow up. And that's how it goes.
Jungle, on the other hand, will be the sequel to Colony. Feedback on Colony has been so positive in the alpha stage that the sequel will be the next thing I write (and then Hunter/Hunted after that). I can't say anything about Jungle since, you know, spoilers! But it will be more of the awesome that was Colony.