The first one I dealt with, I called “Producers”. It encompassed a single thread. It ended up at 63,000 words, about what I had figured one. It came relatively easy and, thus encouraged, I went blithely on, not realizing what I had begun.
Each book after that became more difficult because they ran concurrently. Not only did I have to ensure that no character knew on, say, August 12th, things that happened in another book on August 14th, I had to deal with the fact that I had certain things happening on certain days and thus had to build up to them, use them in the other books. Not only that, when characters from the one book met characters from another book, they had to do that in the other book as well, though from an alternate viewpoint. It became a nightmare.
“Destroyers”, the second book I wrote, took two threads from the original unfinished book: that of the sleep-learning scientist, and that of the Germans soldiers. I had only minor difficulties integrating it with “Producers”. “Destroyers” ran up to 67,000 words.
Then the nightmare hit full force. I still had a lot of threads left. I pulled out two that seemed to fit together – one about saving the knowledge that those on Earth had accumulated, the other about saving the seeds of Earth plants. I called it, “Preservers”. But now I had to deal with the two previously published novels, as well as the fourth, unfinished one. And that started my real problems. I made the decision that I would have to wait until I finished the fourth novel before I published the third, because there existed just too many places where I could get in trouble – and I did. I began to loathe the mere idea of working on “Not With A Whimper”. Not because I didn’t like the story, but because the writing of it had become so terribly complicated.
“Preservers”, far from the 60-70,000 words I’d originally envisaged, ended up at 98,000 words. And I knew that the fourth, “Survivors”, would top that, because it took up all the remaining threads. Not only did it start before any of the others (on the time line), it finished after them, and had to tie up all the threads from the previous three, because they all meet at the end of the fourth. As well as that “Survivors” contained the major threads of the original – those of Jaswinder and Wen Carson. It ended up at a whopping 137,000 words, 30,000 words longer than any of my previous novels.
Altogether, the whole story (four books) of “Not With A Whimper” came to 365,000 words, or approximately 1100 pages in a print book. That was over 4 times what I had originally planned on for my little sequel. It took me 7 years of work and procrastination (mostly procrastination, because I just couldn’t figure out how to handle it) to get NWAW finished.
In the end, I have to say that it was worth it for me, personally. I like the stories; I’m glad they are out there – and completed. But, I also have to say: Never Again!
I hope you enjoy it. Please consider leaving a review.
D. A. Boulter.
Books by D.A. Boulter
D.A. Boulter’s Amazon Page where you can find all the following books:
Not With A Whimper Books:
Not With A Whimper: Producers
Not With A Whimper: Destroyers
Not With A Whimper: Preservers
Not With A Whimper: Survivors
Yrden Chronicles Books:
Trading For The Stars (Book 1)
Trading For A Dream (Book 2)
Other Amazon Books by D.A. Boulter
Courtesan
Pelgraff
Pilton's Moon / Vengeance Is Mine
ColdSleep
The Steadfasting
Prey
Enemy of Korgan
Ghost Fleet
In The Company of Cowards
A Throne At Stake
D.A. Boulter’s blog: http://daboulter.blogspot.ca/
D.A. Boulter can be contacted at: mailto:[email protected]
Not With A Whimper: Destroyers Page 23