June 30th update

Well, here it is, my update for the last two months. One important thing that happened is that the publication date for GODS OF THE HOLLOW WILD has been changed to June 2027, with BOOKS 2 and 3 coming out at the same time in 2028 and 2029 respectively. Honestly, this was great for me. It took away the time pressure from the final draft of GOTHW, and I just spent about three more weeks achieving all my hopes and dreams before I sent it off. In the end, over the previous two months, I went through every chapter again. All 83 of them. I’d sent my editor 269 000 words—she sent me back about 267 000. I cut that down more than I expected in the rewrite—now it’s been sharpened to a startlingly lean 244 000 words!

That was three weeks ago. I then sort of took two weeks off. By which I mean I worked furiously on my job as a creative writing teacher, which I wasn’t planning to do but then realised that I really should. It does pay the bills.

This week I transformed into the BOOK 2 month, and the return was… eh… a little slow the first few days. For three days I just ground away and felt I wasn’t getting very far. But then in the next four days, things started to come together. BOOK 2 stands at 239 000 so far. I reckon I have about 20—40 thousand words more to go. Maybe more. I am super excited about where things are headed. Each book is going to be successively more bonkers than the last as all the action escalates and collides and different vantage points to the action unfold—I’m loving the challenge of making that work. I want it all to be very tight and to just carry you along. I am a huge fan of how Pierce Brown achieved that effect in Red Rising. I have four books planned out, but the plan keeps deepening as I think through the consequences of the world I am creating. I suppose I’m Sanderson’s third lawing my way through all the things I’ve set up. This week I’ve had a lot of those ‘wait, if this happens, doesn’t that mean that…’ moments.

GOTHW is a very intimate introduction to Urvir and its impending crisis through a handful of point of view characters. BOOK 2 broadens that scope and shows the crisis as it begins to accelerate. I love making stuff and then watching it break. Some of my favourite characters get introduced in BOOK 2, and I am happy to say that some of them even survive into BOOK 3. Anyway, I will finish the final draft BOOK 2, THE SECRET IN THE BLOOD, by the end of this year. And then I am definitely having a break. I swear it on the blood of my ancestors.

2027 will be the year I work on BOOK 3, working title, THE RETURN OF MEMORY. I’d love to get the first draft completely done by the end of 2027, but I suppose I will have at least until the end of 2028 to get there. I reckon I can do that. My writing seems to be getting faster and faster as the world matures in my mind, and I figure out more and more of the outstanding elements. So, full steam ahead? My next update will be at the end of August. I am predicting that I will have at least 10—15 thousand written by then, so we’ll see how that goes!

See you then!

Progress Report: May

Sooo… What I really want to do is leave this update until May 15, because that’s when I have to get in the final edits for Gods of the Hollow Wild. But a promise is a promise.

So here goes: I made it 35 000 words into Book 3 before I had to return to the final edits of Book 1. I wrote an entire subplot of 25 000 words, which just felt like it worked, and discovered some new characters in that part of my world that completely surprised me in the best possible way. I can’t wait to get back to them, and to the story at large in Book 3—some huge stuff will be happening there!

The May 15th deadline on Book 1 is consuming all my attention now. My editor has sent me back her edits and I’ve been working hard on the manuscript. I could have done what she required pretty quickly, but… I want this book to be as awesome as I can make it, so I’ve spent some long hours ruthlessly interrogating every aspect of my story and forcing out all the words that shouldn’t be there! Out with you, extra words! I’ve cut the first 125000 words down to 114000, just by sharpening things up. I know it seems late in the day to be doing this. Why not do it in the last eight years?

Well, something weird happened to my brain when I realised I would soon no longer be able to change anything, so I’ve gone into some kind of editing deep state. Also, I think I might be a better writer now than I was then. So I am basically working 12-14 hour days just so I can meet my deadline on my terms. Totally my fault. But I’m sort of enjoying it too, because I feel like I am discovering the essence of each chapter and making it work better.

I am super looking forward to sending it off and waiting to see the ARC’s sometime after that. Then I will curl into a ball under the covers of my bed with my Nintendo switch and play games for a week in total darkness before emerging in a dazzling new form; the Book 2 Moth! I have my 250 000 word draft waiting for my attention. I want it to be super shiny by the end of the year so that I can get back to book 3.

I want to see these books coming out every year, and I have no doubt I can nail that for the first two. Book 3, I reckon I can do too, but it’ll be a bit more of a challenge. One thing that strikes me about this writing business is that it seems to be endless weird deadlines before you ever get close to publication. There will be that moment when book 1 is typeset and in book form but then there’ll still be final corrections. So even after 15 May I won’t be done yet. But February 2027 isn’t far off, and I’m pretty close to done! See you in 2 months!  

Progress Report: February

So this is where I will be putting updates on my works in progress. I will be aiming for updates every two months. At the moment I have three different books in the Hollow Wild Series in progress. They are all at different stages:

Book 1: Gods of the Hollow Wild: this is with my editors at Tor UK and Text Publishing Australia. They will be sending it back to me in a few months so I can do the next round of edits in time for the advance reader copies to come out in about July. After that, it will be the final run towards February 2027 when it’ll be out in every shop in the universe! It’s sitting on about 265000 words. Which is just a touch over the original 150000 words my publisher originally agreed to. But we all agree it’s hardly noticeable when you look at it from the front.

Book 2: The Secret in the Blood: I have written a second draft of this. It’s sitting on 250000 words. It’s coming out in February 2028, by which stage I will have written my third draft and probably made it a little bigger. But not in a noticeable way. From the front.

Book 3: The Return of Memory: I am working on this until I get Gods of the Hollow Wild back for the next round of edits. So far I am about 22000 words in on the first draft. I know all the major beats and have loads of notes but there’s still so much planning happening with this one. The gods are in the detail, so to speak. I’m super excited about what I’ve got down so far and all the different places I’m going to take things. I have the next couple of months to see how far I can get—after that I won’t be returning to it until I have that third draft of Book 2 nailed down.

Apart from that just waiting to find out more about my cover. I’ve seen the cover brief (what my publishers want the illustrator put on the cover) and I am beyond excited to catch my first glimpse of what the illustrator will come up with!

Another update in two months!

Michael

ANNOUNCEMENT: TOR UK Acquires GHW!

Tor UK (an imprint of Pan Macmillan), has announced the acquisition of Gods of the Hollow Wild! It’s super exciting to be involved with one of the great publishers of epic fantasy.

You can read more here. https://trade.panmacmillan.com/tor-grabs-epic-fantasy-trilogy-by-michael-sala