Break the Castle update

I made some serious progress tonight with Break the Castle by finally deciding screw it, this thing needs to be written. The big problem is its middle third. It is both at once bloated and not bloated enough. In the hands of a better writer, it would be a full-blown novel, but it doesn’t feel right that way.

I hit a real snag when I realized I was introducing an important scene far too soon. I had it plotted out as happening in the 70k range, when it looks like it’ll be happening around the 50k mark. This leaves the last third of the novel to fill up an absolutely stupid amount of the 100k mark I hoped to hit (that’s usually my mark for most my novels – GAHB and Smyle are noticeably larger, while For All the SIns is far shorter).

But in all honesty, maybe this will work better as a shorter length novel. Maybe I can find a way to punch up the fight scenes and fill them out, or do more character dialogue. There’s also the mater of a subplot I abandoned and which might make a return at some point. I’m not sure.

In any case, 6k tonight on it isn’t bad at all. To date, the first book in the series has two or three reviews and about as many buys, which I still don’t understand in a way that kind of broke my spirits for a year or so. But I want to see this story through to its fourth book, at least. And with a second, I can start to do advertising for the first in a more aggressive way, so maybe there’s hope left.

Author: therealcamlowe

Writer, occasional victim of pug crop-dusting. View all posts by therealcamlowe