When Will Each Book Be Published?
This is an understandably important question, and an extremely difficult one to answer. Ideally, a new book would be published every six months. However, such a schedule is really not possible. I am a full-time science teacher, and can only write during my breaks.
The Apollo Salvatoir stories mean a lot to me. I waited 35 years to share these books with anyone, and 20 years into my writing career until I felt I could do them justice. After waiting this long, I can’t now shortchange the characters, by rushing their stories to press.
The entire story arc and dozens of side stories are inside my mind, ready to go. However, it isn’t an easy thing to get these stories out of my imagination and onto paper. The reality is that my early drafts are terrible. They contain the story, but without any polish. I would be mortified if anyone other than myself read them. They are full of cliched writing and cringe. By somewhere around the tenth draft, I have gotten a lot of the cringe out, but I tend to write in a very wordy style, where I over-describe things and use a lot of tedious language. Thus, it takes me several additional rounds of reading and editing to move the story forward, and push the description into the background. By somewhere around the 15th draft, I finally start to have a semi-polished story that I will anxiously share with others, but it really takes me until about the 20th draft before I will begin to consider publishing a book.
While the details and nuances of the story have been in my mind for decades, and the characters with their many and varied personalities already inhabit my heart, it takes a lot of work to get the story that ends up on the written page to match the adventure written in my heart. So that when I read it, it feels like the same thing I see in my imagination every night when I go to bed. Until then, I can’t release the books. Doing so wouldn’t be fair to the characters.
It usually takes me around 100 full writing days to go through 20 drafts. However, it is a bit more complicated than just sitting down and writing for 100 consecutive days. While I can do two, three, or sometimes even four drafts in a row, eventually my mind becomes blind to my own writing. The sentences become familiar, and I can no longer hear how they sound. When this happens, I have to take a week or two to allow my mind time to forget my own writing. Thus, realistically, I need a minimum of six months to complete 20 drafts… if I can find 100 full days in those six months to write. Keep in mind, that I have other obligations besides just writing. Thus, a more realistic projection would be 12 months to get a manuscript ready. Then there is all the work that comes after that. Relating to preparing the manuscript and getting printed books ready.
While I will not commit to a specific timeframe, out of fear of disappointing someone, I can and do promise that I will continue to write these books on a regular release date, that will resemble something like every 12-18 months. With the next book (Book 2) being published no later than mid 2024 (This much I do promise).
