Schism of the Living Dead

Belated St. Valentine’s Day Weekend Felicitations from the San Uncanny Valley! Because why not? It’s when I started writing this post....

There are those rare, revelatory moments in the course of writing a manuscript when you stop mid-pace before your keyboard and look around at a changed world. You realize a beloved character must die, for instance, and there is no credible way around it if your story is to have any weight. That point in the narrative called the Darkest Hour shouldn’t be merely dark, but the darkest. Nothing personal, O wonderful three-dimensional human I conjured from experience and imagination. Just business.

Fortunately, I crossed that grim Rubicon years ago. What happened to me one feverish Tuesday night last month did require a major decision, though. Unlike other narrative choices, this one came complete with a Plan B in case it didn’t work. Although, in a way, it’s also Plan A. Which is to say, I’m doing both, because I’m not taking any chances.

What stopped me in my pacing—my actual writing gets done here; the rest is data entry—was the thought that I not only could, but possibly should declare a stopping point. I could  issue a third book called Escape from Colorado Springs or something more creative, while making The Saga of the Dead Silencer a tetralogy with The Wrong Kind of Dead as its finale.

The advantage would be to have a book out. It’s been going on six years since the publication of Grace Among the Dead and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn everyone who read and liked that book has given up on a sequel. It would let people know that the series is still very much underway.

But would I use the time to waste more time finishing my series? That was the question that vexed me. I could see releasing Escape from Colorado Springs as the third book and still taking too long to finish the series as a whole.

But would that be better than nothing? At least I’d have another book there. Both books split from the larger whole would clock in over 250 pages, so they’d be respectable in terms of length, and therefore more digestible in terms of serving size. So much for my dream of writing a 500+ page Stephen King-esque doorstopper, but, hey, you do what you gotta do.

On the other hand, why not both?

Just don’t hit it too hard, okay?

I’m floating between 353 and 354 narrative pages, depending on where I am in the Neverending Edit. I invariably end up losing entire pages in this process. Much like “throwing clay” on the spinning wheel, I’m peeling off extraneous matter to shape my piece, even as I add more to it. I can already break off my third book at around page 250. Once I’ve got the story of Agnes and Elyssa nailed down once and for all between pages 34 and 149, it’s good to go.

I can set aside a digital copy of that narrative as my third novel while continuing to work towards finishing my larger work. And should it get to the point it looks like I’m not going to get this done in time for summer release, I’ll release the third book.

Also, for all I know, the editors at Severed Press might like it better split up that way. For my part, I’m still angling for a doorstopper. Just to say I did one. It’s where I’m at right now with all of this, and I’m happy to be somewhere.