1. Following a huge burst of writing, I've finished the first draft on King Henry Short Pack Two. As has been the plan, I won't be stopping to edit it right away. One, because I like writing over edit hell. Two, the entire point of this short pack is to give me some breathing room with Amazon's algorithm punishments for not publishing for over a year.
2. King Henry Short Pack Two comes in at 60k words, or about 200 pages. Shit happens in them. It's all mainline stuff, it's all post FM5. You're going to want to read this set of stories. "Driving Miss Vicky" has T-Bone and Vicky at the Coyote Compound, or as they call it First Lie Ranch. "Shadow Running" flashes back and forth between the Lady and Evelyn Strange's attempts to save Eva Reti and the mistakes that got her into her coma. "Home is Where the Crazy Is" sees King Henry return to the Asylum, with the thought of asking Plutarch to help him with something, but ending up with lots of conversations with lots of people. No, it's not required reading, but...you'd hate yourself as a fan of the series if you skipped it. Again: shit happens. War. Peace. Death. Taxes.
3. So, I put FM6 up on the status updates. I outlined it today...the outline itself was three thousand words. I am not an in-depth outliner. This probably gives you some idea of how massive and epic this novel will be. It's going to take me awhile to write it. I've estimated it at 200k words and 32 chapters (8 of which are school story). I will probably start working on it within the next month. If I've underestimated this one then the Mancy help us.
4. Speaking of the school story...I'm really worried about the school story this time around. Epic, remember? I've always felt a need to really balance the action between the two timelines so the average reader (I'm sure there are outliers) doesn't become very annoyed by the change from one to the next. I've been a reader on occasion, I know what happens when you're reading a book, in a groove, then you get to the POV that's either not as interesting as the others or just plain dreadful. You stop fucking reading for awhile. "Guess I'll start with that crap tomorrow, shitty ass Elayne chapters!"
5. Being worried about the school story, I might have to play with it a bit more than I have in the past. Stack the school story so it ends quite a bit for the insane shit happening at the end of FM6 starts and the like. Guess we'll see what comes up when writing it all. I'm writing the mainline first this time around. So, could be months and months before I get to 18-year-old King Henry.
6. Gush is still a thing, I promise!
7. Going to try to get back to doing the editing and formatting for the print-on-demand editions early next year. I might just do FM1 first as a test and then have the others follow. One thing I'm waiting on is the "first female president will be a MILF joke" in FM2, cuz...we might have a first female president soon and ya know...the story takes place in 2018. Might have to change that joke. Or the Donald could save me...screw the rest of the country, but save me some work...so ya know...look on the bright side???
8. Time is catching up on me, I imagine as we near the end of the series the real world will pass it by and it will feel much more alt world than before. FM6 takes place six months after FM5 btw.
9. Star Wars Trailer...HOLY FUCKBALLS!!!