There’s always a two. The “one” is way back in January. I had good thoughts. I’ve made some decisions, since.
At least book two is going to be continuing chapter numbers. The so-far unnamed and unranked army guy arriving in the first snowfall is going to end book one. Book two will pick up immediately. I may even do the the “first chapter of book two is the last chapter of book one” thing. I find that somewhat annoying when binge reading, but it’s handy when reading as they publish, which is important for cash flow.
I’m not sure about recaps. I love the Primal Hunter recaps. The author (I doubt Zogarth is a real name) suggested removing them and the fan-base let their displeasure be known. I may do both. If I do, it will be the full word: Recapitulation, which presumably follows decapitation.
That nicely fits with my thoughts in the initial Structure post and the tentative Publishing Schedule. Given the four month delay on Chapter 19 (18 back in June), the dates in that schedule are incredibly optimistic. However, the ordering is still valid.
Chapters 23 and 25 are moving along nicely. Chapter 24 is done. Chapter 26 has fallen apart and needs to be rebuilt. “Cattle Drive” has now moved to Chapter 28. I may hit 30, after all.
It would be meta-fun if there were an even base-12 number of chapters. The importance of that is going to crop up in book two. But that means 24 or 36. The former has already been exceed. I don’t think I have enough to say in book one to reach 36.
On the other hand, trying to wrangle Chapter 26, I updated the OutlineThingy document with the days-since count. Chapter 26 (tentatively) covers days +39 and +40. Assuming I make it to 60 days, that means the whole thing starts in mid-July. I was expecting mid-June. For time-line purposes alone, 36 chapters is not impossible.
I’ve already pushed the end from chapter 22 (in the outline) to chapter 29 (now). It’s not inconceivable that it pushes to chapter 36. That’s now sitting in the back of my head. I may even go back and split some of the longer chapters just to push the number.
It would be gimmick-y, but it would be yet another clue to readers that base-12 matters. There is other foreshadowing stuff, but the meta nature of this one is tempting.
Rejected cover: The glow beneath the eyes and the torn jeans. I would probably deal with either alone, but both together seems too much. There is also the lack of glowing things. Don’t count this one out – I might manually fix the eyes.
