So, I finally got through the majority of rewrites and cuts for Volume 2. Gotta be honest - I didn't think it would take this long. But that's because of how poorly formatted those original chapters are. Just rereading them caused me to do tons of overhauls on the text. They seriously needed it. IMO, so much of the work I did back then was just... bad.
Much of it was honestly hard for me to look at, and I couldn't just leave them the way I had originally written them. There were parts that I outright threw away, haha. I was all, 'I made that? Blech.'
Yeah, lots of older sections were relatively clumsy and poorly-written. Too much exposition and not enough character. At the time it made sense to write them that way, considering what story beats I was attempting to get through. Plus the daily chapter format of web novels makes the structure janky to begin with.
All said, things looked really choppy for many portions, specifically for Arc Three. It was absolutely necessary to edit and refine them to make them much more readable in a light novel format. Which is why it has taken so very long to actually do.
Apologies for that... I seriously hoped that I would be long since done before now, but I hadn't expected my work to need so much editing. Lamentable, but ultimately a better story in the end.
So far, I've gotten the text down to 480 pages, with about 98k words. It's possible I could get this slightly slimmer, but I think I'm pretty much done with major edits. I'm already way past due, and need to start working on formatting.
Which btw, formatting and images will cause that page number to increase. So definitely expect something closer to 490 - 500 pages when all is said and done.
As long as its under 500 all told, then things should still be good. Fingers crossed.
I'll be doing another couple of passes for congruence, flow, pacing, and so on. And then I'll be concentrating on illustrations as much as I can. I'll be shooting for an end of September release, but depending on how this move goes could go to October.
I know I should have been doing illustrations at the same time as the edits, but as I've noted in a previous blog post I have been severely demotivated.
Writing Scions of Gaea has been a deeply contemplative and depressing experience, simply because that's the general mood of the book itself. It goes to show that those feelings will bleed into my daily life
Still, both books are going well. Apologies it's taking so long. But don't worry - Ravens of Eternity Volume 2 is still on the way, and Scions of Gaea is still going out as scheduled. Despite all the despondence, lol.
Stay tuned for more soon!
