I added the mature draft of Chapter 8 (The Sister’s Eyes) today (March 12).
Progress on the final edits continues and I am still working toward a May release of The Balance. I’m planning (at least) paperback and Kindle versions for now, and am considering a hardcover edition as well, although that won’t be decided until later. Suggestions are welcome on this. I’m also debating whether to create an E-Pub version or not. I haven’t had good experiences with E-pub, although I intend to keep an open mind.
The word count for the final editing keeps changing, usually downward, although this depends on the chapter. Since the Beta Read version, I’ve cut about 5500 words from the book and broke Chapter 25 into 3 separate sections—This was the longest chapter in the book and had two natural break points.
The book was originally 86K words long (first draft), written between Thanksgiving 2011 and New Years Day (Jan 1) 2012 (over about 6 weeks). Afterward, it grew to 150K words before I started separating out more of the backstory sections taking it down to about 135K words. Later, I gradually trimmed the writing, eliminating redundancy and then I removed 3 chapters that I thought would, eventually, be better situated in the second part of the story. Currently, there are about 112K words in the book, although this may increase or decrease. I’m actually considering pulling a portion of one of the cut chapters back into the book. The intent is to offer a complete story without delving into the meat of the next part of the tale.
I plan to write the story of The Balance as three parts ( parts of book 2 are already written and the plot is fairly mature), although this book can stand alone. The second part of The Balance will be finished after I complete two other books: I AM (A Sci-Fi story set in the not-too-distant future) and DISOBEDIENCE (a supernatural thriller that spans more than one time period).
I welcome feedback.
Michael
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