Good News/Bad News: Release date change for A Dance of Smoke & Steel

Ugh. This is the bad news: ADoS&S is going to have a new release date.

The tl;dr version is — the book ran long and I ran late, so Saxen & Laina’s book is being pushed back a bit (I’m not yet sure of the date, but this is a heads-up that if you pre-ordered, you might get a notification.) I’m hoping it’s only a couple of months, but Berkley has to figure out the new production schedule (revisions, copy edits, marketing, etc) along with a pretty new slot in their catalog, so those things are being juggled right now and I’m sure we’ll know pretty soon what it’ll be. This is a pain in the butt for them, and it’s all my fault, and I hate to disappoint them (and readers!)

The good news: Basically the book is long enough to be two books(!) and I think it’ll be a lot better for the bit of extra time that will be added — from editing to simply having the audiobook come out concurrently with the print.

So what the heck happened?

Call it 2020 with a side of dominoes. I ran late with Stone & Snow because I rewrote the middle of that book a couple of times, and since I had back-to-back deadlines, being late on Book #2 made me automatically behind on Book #3 — which was why the original release date for #3 moved from December 2020 to February 2021 originally. Berkley knew I would need more time, and the new plan was to turn in the book early to mid-July.

It turned out that I needed a bit more time, and that was just simple math.

Detour into word counts and writer brain

So when I start a new project, I guess about how long it’ll be … and then add on more words, because I’m always wrong. This time, I thought: it’ll be about 150k words, because there’s a lot that has to happen but the setup is already done through books 1 & 2, so I just have the main romantic plot and the secondary plot and I can keep it super tight and it’ll all be great.

So then I took my projected word count, tossed the number into Scrivener along with my deadline, and out popped: I needed to write 3200 words or so a day.

And okay, that’s doable! I have done that many words a day before, lots of times!

Except…not quite in this kind of situation.

My natural/comfortable daily word count runs around 1200-1500 words a day — that’s me working from around 8am to 4pm, editing as I go along, but it’s also where my brain is just kind of done for that day. Sometimes I’ll keep up a 2k/day schedule, but that requires me to do the regular schedule, then after making dinner and such, head back to the computer until I go to bed (hopefully by midnight.)

I can do more (up to around 5k/day) but days like that are usually followed by a couple of days where I’m a lot less productive, and the writing is usually a lot rougher — the kind of writing that I know I’ll have to go back and edit, instead of editing as I go along (which I prefer).

So I saw the project target, and thought: I need to try to get 4k a day, because I know I’ll run long, and there will also be days where I just won’t get that many.

And at first, I did get 4k a day! Whee.

Then I didn’t. I’d be working as many hours each day (and in the past month and more, working pretty much all the hours in the day) but … nope. Some it was just all the things we’re all going through this year: insane news cycles, quarantining stuff, then wildfire stuff, and having a kid home online learning — and also simply my brain not being able to keep up that pace.

Plus the book is ending up longer than I estimated. Which, yay for more story. But, for example:

And I’m not done yet. I’m alllllllmost there. I know exactly how many scenes are left, but my mental wordcount goalposts keep moving, because I have a massive disconnect between how long I think a scene will be, and how long it actually is, so I’ll think: this scene will be 1500 words…and at 5000 words, it’s actually done.

So at the beginning of September when my editor said, “Are you there yet?” — I said “almost! I should have it to you in a week or two!” and a week or two later … yeah, no. I still needed a week or two again. And now again, and god knows it might even need a bit more. So today I updated my editor and she said they are changing the date.

Which…ugh. And sigh.

But in the way that matters most (maybe only to me?) this is also good

There are basically two deadlines in publishing: the deadline to turn in the book, which usually gives everyone a bunch of cushion time for rewrites and such — and the drop dead date, which is when the publisher HAS to have the manuscript to get it into production, or else they don’t get everything done on time. That date was coming for this book very soon, and even if I sent it in in the nick of time — that rush usually means less time for editing, for copy edits, for audiobook production, for ARCs, for everything. And this is a big book, so those things would all be especially rushed.

So this super sucks in a lot of ways, and I’m kicking myself a lot. On the other hand, I’ve had this story in my head for ten years (Saxen & Laina’s story was the one that I initially built the world around when I first began developing this series) and I’ve finally gotten to write a bunch of the scenes I’ve wanted to write forever, but rushing now to the end would mean that I didn’t write the book that I wanted to write (and that you deserve.) So I wish it had been on time, but given a choice between the delay and delivering a book that wasn’t what it should be, I’ll choose giving you all the better book.

And hopefully the delay won’t be long! I’m allllllllmost there (for real.) As soon as I have the new date, I’ll announce it here (and if you pre-ordered, you’ll likely get an update via email from the bookstore.)

Best,

Milla