I know nobody likes to read process posts by writers, but I feel a sense of obligation to the people who have backed my Patreon campaign to let them know about my non-blog writing, so you’ll get this every so often.

My plan has been, and still is, to email every one of my backers the work in progress in 5000-word chunks, before shopping it around to publishers, but it’ll be a little while before I get that first 5000-word chunk done. I actually have something like 10,000 words written so far, but much of that is character notes and plot outlining.

I’ve written chunks of what were intended to be the first three chapters, but the plans have changed slightly since I wrote the first half of chapter three. Thanks to feedback from Plok and Gavin R I now have some ideas as to how to solve the problems with lack of inclusion of women (and, happily, all the women with whom I’ve discussed the actual plot idea have said something along the lines of, to quote one, “that sounds like a cool enough idea that I would read it anyway despite it being a sausage-fest, so I say let it come out how it wants” — that from one of my most outspokenly feminist friends, who I’m not naming just because it was a private email and I haven’t asked for her permission to quote it), but those ideas mean, essentially, vastly expanding the setting of the book and slowing the pacing, so what I was planning as a tight 80,000-word book (the lower limit of what’s acceptable to send to genre editors these days) is now probably going to be somewhere around the 110,000-word mark, which has meant that what I thought was chapter three (the one that starts with the bald man reading a letter, for those who will read it) will now probably be chapter seven or eight, if not later.

Given the massive structural changes I’ve had to make before even getting much down, I’m going to hold off letting backers read the story until I have at least 15,000 words or so of it written, and then send them 5000 word chunks 10,000 words in arrears.

And that 15000 words will take some time to write. I’m currently researching the works and biographies of three different novelists, reading some background about a political movement, reading a huge amount about a military institution, and doing all the other kinds of research one needs to do when mixing fiction and reality (for example I had to hunt around to find an appropriate newspaper crossword, from within a fairly specific window of time, which would have a clue I could use to make two different character points when introducing one of my protagonists. Happily I found one, but it took some time). So the novel is not going to be written overnight — this isn’t going to be a NaNo thing. But it’s being worked on.

AndI think people will like it. It’s far, far more straightforward than my first novel — a fairly linear plot, with good guys, evil villains, the fate of the world as we know it hanging in the balance, daring escapes, and all that stuff, but it will also have some real ideas in it, I hope. I think it’s going to be fun.