Working with Gage

The third book of the Asylum Tales is steadily coming together.  Last week, I crossed the 100,000 word mark. It's always a moment where you stop and just stare in wonder at it.  Wow.  I've written over 100,000 words... again!  In fact, I've done that 12 times.  Each of the six books in the Dark Days series and the three books in the Asylum Tales, plus three others that the world has never seen.  It's kind of insane to think that I've written so much on just two topics.  Heck, I've written over a million words on the Dark Days and Asylum Tales series combined if you include the novellas.  Wow.

But I'm totally getting off the subject here.

Progress is rolling forward with Gage.  I'm down to the last two chapters and I think the rough draft is doing to come in at about 110,000 words, which isn't bad for a rough draft.  The key is that this is an extremely rough draft.  I've got notes for a chapter where the opening gets completely re-written so you get to see a particular character.  I've got even more notes on things I need to go back and tweak.  In fact, I think this book has the most editing notes that I've ever taken. 

While this book isn't as complex as the previous two in term of plot, this book is significantly more tricky when it comes to the emotional turmoil.  There are some very important things that I'm trying to make happen and I didn't actually figure out the best way to do that until the last half of the book. So rather than go back and revise, stopping all forward progress, I've made notes for things to adjust when I go through a second time.

With all the notes, I think this book will be just as long as Angel's Ink and Dead Man's Deal.  Maybe even a little longer.  I have also decided that this will be Gage's last book.  I don't know if there will be other books set in the Asylum Tales world, but Gage will not be telling anymore stories.  But don't worry, I've got plenty of other projects that I have been working on for you.