Volume Seven and Eight (?!) Status Update

More than a couple of months have passed since the last Volume Seven status update. During that time, I did what I said I was going to do and stepped away from the manuscript for a bit while I turned my attention to other projects (namely, the Spring Suite of Four-D) as well as the holiday season.

I did return to it sooner than expected, however, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it didn't need as much fixing up as maybe I had originally thought. I was happy and satisfied with the overall story itself, which is huge. There was just a medium-sized list of things that needed tweaking, and after I crossed them all off, I put the draft away again for a little while.

At that point, since I didn't have a next volume to work on (more on that later), I started a complete read-through of the whole series (well, actually not complete, I started at Volume Two) to make sure everything flowed nicely into Volume Seven and that I hadn't forgotten or misremembered any important details. This process culminated in a read-through of Volume Seven itself, during which I made little changes and edits as I went along.

Now I'm in the final polishing stage, which is when I read the thing over and over again, making tweaks until I reach the point when I can do an entire read-through (or two) without changing anything. At that point, I'll know it's ready to be shipped off for a line edit. I'm not sure exactly when that will happen, but I'm guessing sometime within the first half of this year, which sets us up for a launch in the late summer or early fall. (Editor's note: it's going to happen by March 7, which is when I've arranged with my editor to send her the manuscript. Also, I think I might shoot for a launch date in late July, which is 11 years after the launch of Volume One and also Joel and Felicity's birthdays.)

As for any subsequent volumes, if you've been following along, you know that while the main story arc of the Joel Suzuki series ends with Volume Seven, I've long been considering writing four additional volumes that would be sort of "post-adventures" or stories set outside the main arc (more details are in this post from six years ago). I have a few pages of notes for what these stories could possibly be, but I'm not really set on any of them at the moment, and I've also been considering taking a break - maybe even a really, really long one - before I embark on that journey. We shall see.

Anyway, stay tuned for more updates!