A Slight Change in Plans

During the last few days, ‘between the years’ as they call it here in Germany, I have been working on the plots for two novels I have started quite a while ago: “Ignition Rites”, the eighth Knight Agency novel, and “Grey Eminence”, the third Black Knight Agency novel. Now that I know where to go with them, I have pushed them further up the list of my future releases. I will start writing “Grey Eminence” tomorrow and, hopefully, start with “Ignition Rites” after the release of “Alex Dorsey” at the end of February. “Grey Eminence” will then be the last release this year, the first volume of The Eye will be pushed to February 2021.

I’m really glad I sat down, yesterday with “Grey Eminence” and today with “Ignition Rites” and made a plan. I can now see where the stories go and will be able to write the novels down in a reasonable time - especially with my new writing method. I need to run up a certain backlog again, my two years with barely any writing have left me teetering at the edge of not being able to publish four times a year - of not being able to publish at all even.

With “Ignition Rites”, I didn’t have the end game in my mind, which is why I failed before. Identifying what I wanted - and bringing in the Syndicate again -, I was able to do the plotting today. Getting the full plot for “Grey Eminence” done required letting go of the casino sub-plot (which I may still reuse at some point and for one or another of my characters) and realizing that I wanted Jane back in the underworld to a certain degree. Then the story flowed well enough in my mind. Both stories took most of a day each to plot, but it was worth it. I know now how long they will be (give or take a chapter) and thus I know how long it will most likely take to write them (with the Pomodoro method, I can write two chapters a day on the average).

I can plan and I can make sure to have some breaks for other things. Yet, I still have the pleasure of really building up the chapter as I write it. I know what’s in it, but that doesn’t mean I know how precisely I will present it; enough of a discovery for me to keep writing. What worked for “Theoretical Necromancy” and “The Cases of Benjamin Farrens” will work again, of that I’m sure.