So, recently during the editing process of my work and in this blog, I admitted that I had to split my “Magnum Opus” into two books if I wanted to have a product that readers who favoured my genre of “Gaslamp Fantasy” would most likely pick up. My late-to-the-game market research revealed that the average size of such novels ran about 80,000 (or maybe a little more) words and around 350 pages. Trying to push a tome of almost 200,000 words really wasn’t a fight I wanted to take on. I could have found a way, I suppose, where I gutted the book and squished it down to 100,000 words but what effect would that have on the story? And that’s where a writer’s/artist’s idea or vision comes up against “What the Market wants”.

For some reason among creative types, the idea of “Writing to Market” is sometimes seen as selling out. After all You’re supposed to be an artist following some sort of “Divine Calling”. Right? Ahh, those pesky 19th century Romantics and their cute ideas about the artist’s life. I could punch them in the nose. Most artists or writers do not want to starve in an attic while waiting for their Fairy Godmother of Inspiration to descend and bestow Celestial Insight. We got bills.

So, for practical reasons I’m breaking my novel into two more marketable books. On the creative side, I’ve been able to go back and flesh-out supporting characters and bring in new ones that lend even more depth to the world I’ve created. That, weirdly, was a nice surprise and I suppose if I was more of a hardcore “Plotter”, I might have foreseen this. But, that’s okay. My goal is an adventurous, suspenseful, with a little romance, story that will draw readers along for a great escape.

I’ll reveal more and more about the plot for my book over the next while and you’ll get to be the first to see how it develops. There won’t be a Fairy Godmother in it but there will be monsters because….Do I really need a reason?

You can find another great escape in our graphic novels, the fantasy-adventure trilogy The Sorcerer’s Children or go for high-flying sci-fi in The Adventures of Astrodog. Let the stories and characters take you away on adventures of your own.