Still working away on Alex Verus #8. It’s slow going. I’m going to have to push to make the deadline on this one.
One reason for the delay has been a rethink of the book’s content. This is the phase of writing in which I have to make most of the major choices about how the story will pan out, and one choice I’ve recently made has been to compress a couple of major events; instead of taking place at the ends of book 8 and book 9 respectively, I’m now thinking of placing them both in this book instead. It’ll mean the overall story arc will be accelerated, but I think that might be a good thing.
Oh, and on an unrelated note, some people have been pointing out to me that they haven’t been seeing new posts. I put up new posts each Friday at 9am (plus or minus an hour for DST) but recently posts haven’t been showing on the main page until Saturday or Sunday. The problem seems to have been caused by a plugin (WordPress Super Cache) which I’ve since turned off. As far as I can tell the issue’s fixed, but drop me a comment or an email if it happens again.
Yay, the post delay was frustrating me and I was seriously considering dropping a comment on it today. Glad to see that you sorted it out.
Don’t do it. I would rather have two quality stories than one which which includes to much action at the expense of the thoughtful plot advancement. I would rathe see more character exposition. That being said, I think I enjoyed Chosen the most not only because of the action but the intense emotion Verus expressed. Take a poll of Readers for their feedback. Visit Goodreads and pose the question to your fans.
RLMandell
I agree with Robert in principle – don’t do it if it might compromise the story. But I also trust that if you are considering the move, you might feel the arc is being compromised by not doing it. So I’ll simply suggest that you should consider why you’re doing it; if the reason isn’t related to the integrity of the story, then I’d say reconsider. But if combining the threads can be done without making the story feel rushed and the events can play off of each other well, then it could make for an interesting point of escalation in the series, but you should consider how it would shape events and expectations for future volumes as well. You don’t want to get stuck in a writing trap of doubling the degree of conflict (or more) for each book.