January 26, 2013
I often say that I've written six novels. I consider the first four of those to be my apprenticeship to writing novels, as I practiced the craft and art of it, and the history of the novels I have written is a bit complicated. Here is the history of my novel-writing. Note that I do not include the many many shorter works I wrote and completed interlarded among these novels.
Out of Fantasy: Begun in 1992 and finished March 22, 1996 at 7am before much revision, this was my first completed novel, 80,000 words long. It contains incipient versions of some of the same characters who are now in the Redemption Saga and some of the early mythology of Raya.
The Invasion:
Horde: First work begun 1997, but only scattered progress until 1999, it was completed in December 2001 at 110,000 words. This was the first book of the Invasion quadrilogy.
Prisoner: After finishing Horde, I moved immediately into Prisoner, working on it through 2002 and finishing it at the beginning of May, 2003 at 80,000 words.
Rebellion: I took a break after Prisoner because I wasn't sure exactly how the narrative should continue. In October 2003, I had my most prolific writing day ever, producing 10,000 words in a single day. That was the beginning of Rebellion, which I finished by January of 2004 at 85,000 words
At this point, I languished with The Invasion, discovering that I no longer liked the beginning of the series. Horde to me seemed dull and inadequate to the more recent work I had done on Rebellion.
In the summer of 2004 I wrote 14,000 words on Departure, a non-Fantasy, mainstream novel that I abandoned because I didn't like it. At that point I decided to rewrite The Invasion from the beginning.
I began the rewrite of Horde in 2004 and worked on it until 2005, when I began a job writing software. That job left little space for writing fiction, so The Invasion (and all my writing projects) languished until 2006. On October 3, 2006, after bringing the rewrite of Horde nearly to its completion, at 105,000 words, I put it aside once more.
I'd been writing that story on and off for 10 years, and I wanted to finish something smaller. So at the end of October, in an outpouring of prose, I wrote a contemporary fiction novel, Angie Star, at 60,000 words for the first draft. I revised it until April, 2007, and after writing Gathering Thunderheads, I revised Angie, beginning in July 2008 and finishing the revision in December 2008, bringing the novel to 75,000 words.
Looming Thunderheads began as Gathering Thunderheads, which I wrote primarily between November 2006 and June 2008, finishing it at 165,000 words. Some parts of the mythology that are included in the text had been composed in the years before, but revised and touched up for inclusion.
As I was finishing the Angie rewrite, I began in November 2008 to revise Gathering Thunderheads into Looming Thunderheads. The title change came on March 30, 2009, and I finished that revision at the end of September, 2009.
Since then, I have done work on at least eight other novels, but have completed no more. In 2010 I began a Master's Degree at the University of Alabama, and that work took precedence over writing novels. Since graduating, I retouched Angie and Looming Thunderheads, hoping to get them published. My current focus, as of January 2013, is Death and Life, which is in fact The Invasion reimagined and recast.