The last month has been a bit of a whirlwind. The weeks leading into the new year are typically busy for me and my family, with get togethers and road trips and visiting family.
I knew going into the new year that I had 6 novellas I wanted to get rough drafts done before September. But then I wrote one of the novellas and realized I needed to write them by April at the absolute latest.
The nature of the whole project is tied directly to The Human-Born Era. And while they're shorter stories, they still take a bit of time to wrap my head around. ***Spoilers for The Rise of the Raidin below!!***
About a third of the way through tRotR, Jen discovers that she isn't the only Human-Born hybrid, and that there's a chance all seven of them have been targeted. By the end of the book, it's obvious that all seven Human-Borns were attacked on the same day, at the same time. And though Jen has done some research, she hasn't been able to narrow down exact locations or towns where the Human-Borns might live. The book ends with her preparing to go meet one of the Human-Borns who happens to live in England.
Book 2 of the Human-Born Era (title coming next month!), sees Jen meet all of the Human-Borns, where we see their various cultures and personalities come together (and sometimes clash). I've always wanted to tell the stories of what the other six Human-Borns went through on the day they were attacked. For years I've considered loose concepts of what the day looked like for all of them, and how it shaped who they are, their family units, and the people they interact with.
In a perfect world, I would have released all 7 books on the same day, in their respective languages, in their respective regions. Either I'm impatient or I just didn't see the merit of doing something like that right off the bat, I'm not sure. I love the idea, but it's not like I have a following to jump up and down with excitement at the prospect.
Anyway, all of the novellas I'm writing are those stories. I've completed 2 of the 6, and am fairly happy with the progress I'm making. Though I also know that at least 1 of the remaining 4 novellas will require a little more research than the others. The day the Human-Borns were attacked was a global event, spanned the globe, and impacted different cultures and ways of life. These preliminary drafts are very rough and very short. My hope is that, when polished and completed, each novella will sit somewhere around 40k words each. For reference, The Rise of the Raidin was just over 90k words. Book 2 is currently sitting around 150k words. Book 3 (the tome as my Betas and I like to call it), is even longer.
Writing novellas has been both fun and challenging. Longer books is more the norm for me, not shorter. So to arrive at word counts that, in a usual manuscript of mine, would have been a quarter the length of the whole story and slapping the "I'm done" label on the rough draft makes me feel like it's incomplete. But, these are very rough drafts. I'm doing very little editing as I go, and am only focusing on big issues as I edit. I look forward to revisiting the novellas after book 2 is polished and ready for publication.
As things stand, I'm still on track to release book 2 of The Human-Born Era in November of 2022. Lord willing, that won't change, but, if it does, I pray you stick with me!
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