I had one of those problems with Book 19 where I get to a point that I realize something is wrong. I was already around 1/3 into the expected final word count. It took only a day or two for the ideas to clarify. I had been so intent on writing the story a certain way that I just ran with that, but I was running into deeper and deeper mud and finally had to stop and turn back.
I realized that I had gone too fast, missed the scenery, and run off the road, to continue the analogy. In other words, the story was dull and missing something.
Fortunately, what I had written still had a lot of useful material. It provided some good ideas and also showed me some weaknesses. I had 17K words and didn't lose much of that with rewriting so far. I still have some material to rewrite, but it's better already with just a few changes and rearranging some of the early scenes. It definitely has more intrigue and action. Now, it's conforming to what I want from these stories--action and good pacing, not slow.
As I said in my previous post, this one drops Nya, L'Ni, and Zaer into a medieval fantasy setting, although without magic. High fantasy space opera! I'm hoping it works for readers. I've written fantasy before, but I much prefer science fiction. And while I don't like horror, I did my Starfire version of horror in Book 12, MESSAGES, with the derelict Urishan slave ship to do something different. I like the ability to try different forms of storytelling, even mixing genres. This series gives me a lot of freedom to experiment.
That's where I am now.
Thanks for reading.
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