Welcome to my worlds!

I'm James Maxey, author of fantasy and science fiction. My novels include the science fantasy Bitterwood Saga (4 books) the Dragon Apocalypse Saga (4 books), numerous superhero novels including Nobody Gets the Girl and the Lawless series, the steampunk Oz sequel Bad Wizard, and my short story collections, There is No Wheel and Jagged Gate. This website is focused exclusively on writing. At my second blog, Jawbone of an Ass, I ramble through any random topic that springs to mind, occasionally touching on religion and politics and other subjects polite people are sensible enough not to discuss in public. If you'd like to get monthly updates on new releases, as well as preview chapters and free short stories, join my newsletter!




Sunday, February 3, 2019

Week Five: 10k+

Don't have my exact word count, since I'm back at the Robotic Rodeo selling books. Well, hoping to sell books. Parking was worryingly easy to come by this morning. I've been to many, many cons where Sunday is my best day for sales, but the overlap with Superbowl Sunday might make this day somewhat under attended. (Though it's just the first half hour and I've already had one sale, so maybe my pessimism isn't justified.)

Anyway, I know that I was over 8,000 words on my home computer, and have just over 2000 from yesterday on my laptop, so I'm definitely over 10k, but probably under 11k.

I'm up to 17 chapters on Dragonsgate. I've finally brought Hex back into the book and it's been a joy writing him. Hex is one of my favorite characters from the original trilogy because he's got an interesting world view and, most importantly, a sense of humor. Looking back, I don't think I appreciated how much the comic relief characters contributed to the books. Having Poocher, a pig, have an actual storyline in the first trilogy did a lot to pace the mood and deflate tension with a touch of humor.  Blasphet with his over-the-top villainy was also just fun. So far, this book has had a surplus of grim and driven characters. Writing Hex makes me realize how much I need to add a witty rogue to the human cast.

I also worked a bit on Nobody Nowhere. It's shaping up nicely, but I really need to figure out the scope of the book. I'm at a point where I can introduce more characters, but worry about having too many characters. There's no point in introducing a character if I don't plan to give them an arc, and I'd like to keep the word count under 90k, like the rest of the books in the series. This give me a practical cap of 5 or 6 important characters in addition to the protagonist, plus maybe another handful of minor characters with more limited roles. Things are complicated by the fact that this is a parallel world novel. So, for a lot of my characters, there's two different versions of them.

Oh well. I'll figure it out. And it it does turn into a longer book, so be it.

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