All these feels!

O_O I surrender.

So my flitting has come to an end and I’ve finally settled on what to write.
A sequel, naturally. Certainly makes it easier to write when it comes to worldbuilding as well … it’s a very old sequel. I never finished the original version, but I did do a lot of plotting.
And it’s reached the third chapter already, that’s over 10,000 words! Already! 5,000 words of that was in the last two days. That makes me wanna get up an happy dance. Right up until I recall that, if it hits all it’s marks, the whole thing will be 230,000 words long. 10k is only 5% of the story.

Just sit back and process that for a moment.

Thing is … the story I write now may not end up as being a sequel so much as a second duology/trilogy written in the same world. All because I’m splitting The Rogue King.

*gasp* Could it be so? Am really carving up my beloved baby?

Well … yes. You see, it’s been through several rewrites since the story first appeared sixteen years ago. The original was in first person and didn’t quite make 95,000 words. I rewrote in third person, it came to 131k. Then I started the task of polishing it to a standard I felt were it was fit to go out into the world. And through each edit, the word count grew.
And, though I did not wish it at the time, I’ve always promised myself that, if The Rogue King ever reached 200k, then I would seriously consider splitting the story into two. The word count went beyond that number some time back. So I sat and pondered the question of where to make the break.
Ultimately, while I could make three books out of it, keeping a good beat requires me to divide at 99k. Dividing any further would mean the first book drops to 67k. Not bad, word-wise, but the story … I’m not certain if the full arc could hold being broken into three pieces without looking like it’s been broken into three pieces.

Plus, I plan to self-publish this and a smaller word count would make it affordable to have the professional edits it will no doubt need (edits I will have to save forever to get done). Not to mention covers … as fun as they are to make, I don’t think they’re professional grade.
Yes, I tried the query route. I did get a few nice rejections, but they were ultimately still rejections. Including a rather hurtful time with one small publisher that lead me on for months and then dropped me. Something about the story being too unique to market (O_o). I don’t think I can go through with all that again, not with this one.

*ahem*

Anywho … for now, The Rogue King has a twin which, after much deliberating with myself, I have called The Trexen Prince. If I do decide to make it a trilogy, expect me to be mentioning The Shadow Prince and The Vengeful God.