Sylvanus’s first draft is complete!

I typed the final words of Sylvanus: Swords and Suns this morning.

The first draft is officially complete at 31 chapters, 468 pages, and 136,765 words. Those numbers will certainly change as I work through the manuscript. Some things will be cut, others expanded, and there are already places I know I want to revisit. By the time the book is finished, however, I expect it will settle somewhere around 140,000 words, putting it roughly alongside Koen: Quills from the Raven’s Nest in length.

Getting here took about seven months of actual writing, although Sylvanus has had a somewhat unusual journey. I started the book at the beginning of August last year, shortly after completing the editing of Koen with Grendel Press. When Koen was released in October, I put Sylvanus aside so I could concentrate on the launch and promotion. Somewhere along the way, another story kept pulling at my sleeve, and I spent the winter writing Jezelle: Thief of Forks. Once Jezelle was finished and published in April, I returned north to Sylvanus and have been there ever since.

Now, almost a year after I first wrote his opening pages, the entire story finally exists.

There is still a great deal of work ahead. A completed first draft is not a completed novel, and at nearly 137,000 words, there is plenty to work through. I need to read it as a whole rather than as a collection of chapters written over many months, tighten the places where the story wanders, strengthen those that move too quickly, make sure all the threads connect properly, and deal with whatever strange decisions Past Scott left behind for Present Scott to discover.

Still, finishing the first draft is the biggest milestone.

Perhaps more remarkably, I finished it about a week ahead of the schedule I had set for myself. That gives me a little more breathing room for editing, proofreading, formatting, and all the other work that comes between typing “The End” and putting a book into someone’s hands. If everything goes as planned, I hope to publish Sylvanus: Swords and Suns in late November or early December, just in time for the holidays.

Sylvanus will also mark something I find increasingly difficult to wrap my head around: it will be my ninth book set in Lucardia.

What began years ago with a story about a boy finding an ancient sword in the woods has grown into something far larger than I ever imagined. With each book, another corner of Lucardia has opened up. Its history has become deeper, its people stranger, its kingdoms more complicated, and the connections between the stories have continued to grow. Sylvanus pushes farther into that history while continuing the story begun in Koen, bringing me another step closer to completing the larger sequence that leads into The Absolution of the Morning Star.

For the moment, though, I am trying to enjoy this particular milestone before I begin tearing the manuscript apart again.

The first draft of Sylvanus: Swords and Suns is complete.

Nine Lucardia books.

And there are still a great many stories left to tell.

Cheers!