Back to the word count subject prefixes for me, as I continue work on Of Rock And Earth, the novel that I began as something of an experiment for 2009’s NaNoWriMo. I successfully hit the 50,000 word limit by the end of November, which meant I’d achieved my first ever NaNoWriMo challenge – something that I believe is quite rare, a lot of people struggling in their first year and only hitting their stride in the second. I think my work on Evinden over the previous few months helped a lot, meaning I was already ‘in the zone’.
What I hadn’t been expecting was to like my NaNo story quite this much. Given that I came up with it more-or-less on the first day, it’s blossomed into something rather spiffy. There’s even potential for it to turn into a trilogy, but time will tell whether I can be arsed with that, or whether the story really demands it. Currently I’m focusing on getting this novel completed – although I hit the 50,000 word count for the contest, it wasn’t the end of the story.
I have now finished Part Two of the book, which culminated in a rather exciting, albeit taxing, action sequence that seemed to go on forever (hopefully it won’t read that way!), leaping around multiple locations and involving a fair few characters. It pleasingly drew together a lot of plot threads that were introduced at the end of Part One, however. Overall the plot seems to be slightly more intricate and sneaky than Evinden‘s, which is much more straightforward and rompy.
Part Three is going to be more introspective, providing a hopefully thrilling climax in a quieter manner – winning with brains rather than brawn – and then I’ll see what I’ve got. it’s going to be on the shorter side, in terms of the word count, but should still come in at a respectable ‘novel’ sized length of at least 85,000 words. It’s aimed much more at a ‘Young Adult’ kind of readership, so being on the slender side compared to Evinden‘s heftyness works fine. As long as the story works, at least.
More soon. I’m hoping to upload some PDF excerpts from both books soon, too, so that prospective readers can get a taster.
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