[progpress title=”Epsilon” goal=”90000″ current=”54060″]
[progpress title=”Falling Stars” label=”%” goal=”100″ current=”100″]
Progress on Epsilon book 1 continues to go very well, despite a few concerns over the past few evenings regarding whether or not a reader might feel “cheated” based on a particular occurrence during chapter 13. I’ve been assured by a few people that it should work out (thanks, Brandon and Krinny) so I should worry a little less. As of this writing, I’ve gotten no new critiques of Chapter 1 at Critique Circle. Chapter 2 is due to go up tomorrow and I’ll get the first half of Chapter 3 queued up to go after that.
In the process of writing this draft of Epsilon, I’ve ended up killing off a lot of “darlings” (thanks again, Krinny). They were things that, in hindsight, didn’t do nearly as much as I thought to progress the story. Then again, the addition of some new characters in this draft has eliminated the need for some of the old darlings (ie, I used to need a way to get Caren and Aaron out of the Borderworlds and back home to Varice; later I’ll need them to go to Epsilon. Lucas Ross provides a fantastic reason for that to happen). Of course, the decision to chop the originally planned novel (which would have been incredibly huge) into several smaller chunks means that some of the metaplots won’t actually be resolved until much later on in the narrative (Aaron’s relationship with his father comes to mind, though that is and will remain the most important metaplot in the whole Epsilon arc). Either way, it’s going to be a very interesting ride.
In other news (but in the same universe), my short story Falling Stars has been appropriately chopped and sent off to the person organizing the anthology. The good news is that it’s done. The bad news is that the anthology is really looking like it might fall through, though that’s through no fault of his or mine. If that ends up being the case, I’ll probably collect Falling Stars with a few other UoC shorts and release them as a low-cost ebook as a precursor or companion to the release of Epsilon book 1. I don’t have any ideas on when these will be released at this point, but stay tuned for updates.
After all, I still need a name for Epsilon book 1 that isn’t simply “Epsilon, Book 1.”