Well what do we have here? Little ‘ole Qwame getting his progress report in on time on account of his spectacular time management abilities, and not in the backseat on a roadtrip.
Unfortunately, the actual progress goes less spectacularly. At the time of writing, the developmental revision is 2/3rds wrapped. I planned on being close to and/ or finished by the end of the month, but sometimes the work flows and sometimes the work sputters. This month was one of the spattering sort.
With not much to provide in the way of concrete progress I thought I’d shed some insight on the craft being applied. I’m still in the meat of Part II in the novel, and while I was correct that there are less notes from the editor, and the writing is generally cleaner; there were other roadblocks. The first of which is that while in the meat and bones of Part II, I stumbled upon a way to flesh out one of the POV characters. A necessary change to turn shitty characters less shitty, or more so depending on how you’re looking at it. Normally this would be a rather clean thing to apply as I work through the novel, but timing and circumstances being what they are, I had to return to all previous chapters and add this context, and also allow the other POV to provider their own insights on this particular character’s new dimension.
The other thing I’m running into is some pretty substantial cosmetic changes. These have encompassed everything from honorific titles in-world, to what characters are wearing, to some drastic setting changes. These are partly on account of extracting the most out of the story’s horror elements, but largely in an effort to pay closer homage to the cultures that influenced the work. The next chapter on the docket involves combining and consolidating it with a prior chapter to make the novel’s chronology cleaner. The work goes on, and this time I am aggressively optimistic the developmental revisions will be finished sometime in June and the novel will be off to the line editing stage.
As for the cover, I am absolutely certain that my cover artist is pranking me. I haven’t found the cameras, but there’s no way he’s’ working this slowly naturally. If nothing changes by the June update I will be doxxing his name, phone number and address. His social too if I can find it. I’ve not heard much from the cartographers, but I don’t know them personally so I’m less inclined to shit on them online. Still no updates to provide on TFC’s sequel or unnamed contemporary novel, but expect those to come soon. Maybe as close as June…
That’s all for May. There’s no telling if the June Progress Report will be on time, but I can guarantee you’ll hear from me before then on some non-book related stuff before then… Until then,
Adios mis amigos