Yet another incredibly busy week has passed me by, leaving many of my plans in the dust. But at the same time, it has been an immeasurably good seven days, and so I sit typing this sitting on a sort of cloud nine.

Crossing the Rubicon

I’ve written repeatedly for weeks now of my amazement that The Scion of Abacus has seemed to resonate with readers enough to climb the sales charts at an astounding rate. Last week I noted that the first volume of the serial novel had dipped below rank 5,000 on Amazon’s bestseller charts. Now, one Friday later, I can report that all three volumes are dwelling sub-5,000, with volume 1 having reached (but not yet broken) the 2,000 mark, before sliding back a fraction.

But the thing that most excited me was the reaching of 1,000 books sold yesterday. Not in total. But for the month of March only. And we’re only halfway through the month. This is simply quite unbelievable given that I sold less than ten books in each of May, June, and July last year, and not many more than that on average for the rest of the months in 2011. I’ll maybe put up more detailed stats at the end of March, if not for anything else than to encourage others who are swimming in a deep sea of obscurity with little hope ahead. All I can say is, you are only defeated when you decide to stop writing.

At any rate, I heard and read much last year about the 1,000 book tipping point, that that was the number at which you crossed the proverbial Rubicon in book sales. If that is the case, then I can only thank God and the readers who bought the books for getting me there. At the end of the day, I am excited to see where the rest of 2012 takes me.

The Drakhar Cycle

Ooooh, there’s a name you won’t find anywhere else on this site. That, my friends, is what is known as a reveal – or a spoiler – or something. The point being that at this moment in time, that is the title of the series I will be writing post-Scion. Given the extreme success of the serial model I’m currently using, I have thought and plotted around a similar structure here, though changing it up a bit.

Essentially, Drakhar is going to be a trilogy of trilogies. Three books almost the length of the completed Scion of Abacus broken up into three smaller volumes, for a total of nine serials. The serial releases will therefore be a bit weightier than Scion‘s 35,000 words per volume (which is already quite a chunk for a serial, which tend to weigh in at 25,000 words or 100 pages an episode), perhaps by as much as 60 or 70 percent. I’ve plotted out the first trilogy of the trilogy of trilogies (try saying that three times fast!) and I like what I’ve come up with.

Not that I’m biased or anything.

Still, it is early days in the project, and more details will be forthcoming, but I’m getting into that space where I grow really psyched about writing again, excited to be tackling something fresh.

Last but not least

Due to the hectic nature of the week, I dropped the ball and only posted one part of my extended essay on religion in fantasy. I will be catching up again next week with discussions on polytheism and atheism in the genre, both world views I’ve used in my own writing. Religion and the tension between it and government is a subject I’ve dealt with in all my books, especially in The Ossian Chronicles, and there have been one or two bits of interesting discussion on the posts hitherto. So, I’ll see you in the comments, next week, I hope.

I realize this is a book blog, or something like it, and I am usually not prone to giving out personal details not related to writing, but I do have to say that I have discovered a new obsession: bread baking. (Have I ever mentioned that I love to cook?) To which end, I ask any bakers stumbling across this website to give me some advice on that craft, perhaps a favorite recipe or pitfalls to avoid. At the moment, I’m just trying a bunch of different breads to see which I like best. One thing I do know, I am not much of a bread eater unless (a) it’s fresh or (b) I made it myself, in which case it is fresh!

[edit] Scion 4

Somehow, when I wrote this post earlier, I managed to forget to announce that volume four of The Scion of Abacus is to be released tomorrow. I am currently finishing formatting and what all, so the file will be uploaded to Amazon this evening. Anyhow, this is simply to confirm that part 4 is on schedule for a March 17 release.

All right. That’s your lot for the week. Cheers!