I have just come back from delivering a fat padded envelope to the post-office, containing 552 pp of FAR ARENA. That's 145 400 words, down amazingly from the near 190 000 words we had when we compiled all the first-draft chapters. Said total occasioned much moaning and clanking of chains from my (Alison's) part as I wandered (figuratively) around like a distressed spectre, wailing 'we're going to have to cut; we're going to have to cut'. I took it to the vicinity of 165 000 words, and then Lynda got her second wind and took it down the rest of the way (... and it was her turn to chortle and mine to make soft whimpering noises of apprehension: 'no, not that part, please not that part'). Feedback from the readers of THRONE PRICE has been much, much appreciated - aside from simply keeping us going through the revisions, it tells us how much we can rely on our readers' intelligence and imaginations - so we don't need 45 000 extra words.

Lynda is presently down in Seattle at Norwescon. I've no idea what she's doing! - between winding up FAR ARENA, her neuropsychology course, her course marking, my clinical study reports, my rehearsal schedule, my other novel (GRAVEYARDS OF NEREIS, which is also done, printed and sent off) and my contracting one or other of the endemic winter viruses (no not SARS) - I never did catch up with what she was doing, aside from a reading by readers of THRONE PRICE or MEKAN'STAN.
posted by Anonymous at 10:48   comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments