Song of the Mysteries Status Updates

Dear Janny
I have just managed to create a new account to start to read again your forum in anticipation of the last volume.
I’ve admired your work for many, many years, and have read everything. A few years ago I re-read the entire collection, and should really find the time to do so again in advance of the finale!
It has been a great pleasure over these years for me to experience your excellent writing, and although I will be sad that this series will be finished, I am sitting with bated breath :blush:.
So much time, effort, diligence and attention clearly goes into these works, and I also want to thank you for your commitment to what may end up being nearly half a lifetime’s work.
Very best wishes
Julia

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Hi Julia, thank you! If the series does well enough, (and even if it doesn’t) I will probably do a few ‘shorter’ works attached to it/historical bits that the main novels don’t cover. Perhaps even a YA novel (I have an outline for it).

So much work went into Athera and there is so much of the iceberg that did not show in the novels, I may well use some of that material going forward.

Expect, also, some standalone novels that are totally new.

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Janny,

I started WOLAS in 1994 after starting the cycle of fire trilogy. I was 12 years old. I have enjoyed this series for most of my life. Thank you for teaching me patience, because dang, when I started the Curse of the Mistwraithe I had no idea it would take me close to 30 years to finish the series. Being a 12 year old I thought I would have a trilogy on my hands! I honestly don’t know how many times I have re-read this series. I enjoy it more every read. But thank you. I have been a fan since Jaric became the Firelord and Korendir escaped slavery. I have followed this thread for 20 years at least. But I just wanted to say thank you. Can’t wait for the finale.

Robert

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Robert - thank you so much for sticking with me, your interest and enthusiasm means the world, you have no idea! I can’t wait for you to get Song of the Mysteries! I am at work on 11a/thought I had it figured, but last night, a brainstorm threw my logic into the trash. The addition to this section will be so much fun to write! A lot more behind me than ahead, pleased to say.

I am so looking forward to the conclusion, but it’s also bittersweet! Thank you for sticking to the story for so long and with such integrity, and this new forum is sparkly fantastic.

Really great to see all the folks who have stood with the series since the start! Heartwarming. My thanks for your enthusiasm, helping to make it happen.

Status update: subchapter 11a is in crude draft, following a brainstorm that revised it substantially. 11b is screaming to get out of my head, I may start it while I smooth over what I added yesterday.

Chapter set 12 is MAJOR and once that one is behind me, the great news: I will be ‘sequencing’ exactly how the rest of the book will fall in place. Draft page count this minute is 742, which puts me within 3 pages of the ‘three quarter mark’ - or about 250 pages left to go for target draft length. That’s ‘on point’ for where I am with the action - ending in sight with the bulk of the difficult stuff well behind.

The count down resumes.

From France, and an absolute fan of all your work I could get my hands on (sometimes a bit difficult from here, but nothing the internet cannot solve), after I discovered your work from your cooperation with Feist: something in Mistress of the Empire was/felt different, and highly enticing, to me at least. I quickly found out what that was and thus started my journey through your tapestries. I have been waiting for this last book of the Mistwraith series for what seems like eons, fitting for such a long-span story. Sorry to say I was a bit disappointed in Destiny’s Conflict: I could not help but feel it as a bit too much of a repeat. I really apologize saying so, but I’m such an admirer honesty sounds a fitting homage. Anyway, enough said, and “encore bravo, Madame Wurts”.

Hello from sunny South Africa.

First book of yours I read was Master of Whitestorm, what a book… it was one of the first Fantasy books I read, and it hooked me on the genre, I almost exclusively read Fantasy since then. Feist, Sanderson, Jordan, Eddings, and of course, my favourite, Wurts.

I started reading this series with Curse of the Mistwraith in my final high school year in 1994, and immediately fell in love with it. I have read every book at release up to Traitor’s Knot, but I am saving up the last books for a straight through to the end read. Reason for this is that I am not big of rereads, as I seem to retain the stories too well, and on a reread I just know too much of the story to follow that I end up stopping halfway through. I have attempted to reread Curse of the Mistwraith twice already, getting as far as the destruction of Jieret’s clan before stopping.

So I have a small favour to ask. I am really burning to start my final read through from the beginning, which should take me a couple of months (life and all that), and I was wondering if you have a reasonably firm idea on when Song of Mysteries would launch? Would it be a couple of months (less than a year), or a year or more?

A ballpark is fine, but if you think it would be more than another year and a half from now I would greatly appreciate the info as I would then rather postpone my reread.

I know this is a big thing to ask, but please, if you can…

Hi Cobus, welcome here, pleasing to see you’ve been with my work so long!

I had to wince, to see you’d chosen Traitor’s Knot for your pause point, as the entire finale to arc III is Stormed Fortress, and the two stories are very tightly linked…it’s a much easier break point between Arc III and the start of Arc IV, and it’s odd, but many readers seem to have done the same (based on the stats). Forgive my authorial head scratch and musing, here’s the best answer I can give to your second question.

Release of Song of the Mysteries - is not up to me, insofar as, once the draft is finished out, the publisher selects the release timing. This can vary enormously - if a book has high demand, they will slot it in pretty quickly (but not a crash rush, because that costs oodles of bucks to take shortcuts). Production time - also depends on how many books they have already locked into schedule. (It’s terribly odd, but quite often authors will all turn in their manuscripts in ‘waves’ - so suddenly the editor can be overwhelmed, and the schedule fills way ahead).

I simply won’t know until they tell me/and since I’ve had terrible experiences (readership wrath) when dates get shifted, I will not announce a release time or date until it is absolutely firm on the publisher’s end.

This brings me to what I can (somewhat) control: the work itself from my end. I am into the last quarter lap of this draft (finishing out Chapter Set 11 at this moment). All the threads are into their finale run at this stage, everything that matters is set into motion, and there are only details of timing and a few odds and ends left to sort out. As you’ve noticed by my updates, the pace of my solid words on page has picked up. Expect this to continue/unless there’s unforeseen Life interventions. (no issues pending that I can see).

I absolutely will have the draft turned in when I get there, and you can follow the updates here to see the precise page count of the draft. (Today/to the moment it is 760). I ‘target’ 1000 pages for a draft finish line. Sometimes I run over/sometimes under, though, jeez, never by much, and maybe only once. This book is pretty precisely on target for length and what I’ve got left on the plate to bring to pitch and wrap up. It could (but likely won’t) surprise me too much. The planning for the final volume has had to be very tight to get everything into position.

Once the draft is turned in, I spend a few more months finalizing the language. My drafts are extremely tight dramatically - but the language always needs the finishing touches. At that stage, I can work straight on for hours, there are no pauses or slow days or moments digging through back notes/scenes/history to be sure of consistencies or making sure no stitches are dropped. It’s just pulling out redundancies and tightening style.

Given this is the finishing volume, I do have (for once/not since Peril’s Gate’s fiasco mid merger) a real editor who wants to look over the draft. The past four books - I didn’t turn in until the absolute final, and the manuscript went straight into production (!!! eek, no safety net at all).

I have no idea what kind of interaction there may be from draft to finalized text; the editor is new to the project and I’ve never worked with her before. I anticipate a good experience, it will be great to have other eyes on the project to be sure no stitches are dropped.

I’ve gathered, therefore, there will be a story edit stage and a line edit/from the publisher’s end. What that does to production time (shortens or extends it) I don’t know at this stage.

I suggest that you keep watching the updates/I’ll be posting in real time, and should have a much clearer grip on things once I complete the last chapter set. This draft could, conceivably, wrap in 14 chapter sets; could be less or could be more, I will know when I get there.

Expect I will post an update photo of the draft pretty soon, it is truly overflowing the box. The finishes of these monsters make a pretty mean looking stack. I feel really pleased at this stage to be in the creative home stretch.

Everything will depend on the publisher’s decision on pub date (how far out) and production time. I fit the artwork in after the text is final, and last time around, I got the images in early.

You might want to scratch the itch checking out the satellite short stories that relate to the series, meanwhile, there are six of them and they fill in a lot of back history detail that bears directly on the story at hand.

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Hi, thank you so very much for the detailed response!

Status update today: Chapter Set 11 is in the can.
Starting into the draft of 12 main tomorrow.

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I’m really impressed with how open you are about the development of SOTM. It’s obvious how much time you spend in planning and development - does it drive you bonkers to hear other authors talk about how they just discover the story as they go and wonder how they can do that?

I guess I’ve got some ebooks to start buying to get rolling on this rave-reviewed series and make sure to help keep your cats in kibble for the next year!

Thanks for your efforts in keeping the audience ‘in the loop’ all the way through and congrats on nearing the home stretch!

Thanks for the update Janny. Knowing roughly how many draft pages are to go, would you have any idea of how many chapters SotM will have?

Oh Janny, that would be so wonderful. I don’t think I could bear it not to hear more about Athera!
Best wishes
Julia

Hi Janny! I’ve read everything, and loved it all. I can’t wait for the final book.

A little off topic, I was wondering if you would consider re-releasing Stormed Fortress through Grim Oak Press, since it didn’t get published in hardcover, and I’m missing it on the shelf with my other hardcovers in the series?

I have everything except Sorcerer’s Legacy in physical and audio. I’m a big fan and have been with the series since Mistwraith came out. I love your work, and can’t wait for my Daughter of the Empire to be published and shipped. (Also, I’d love Sorcerer’s Legacy and the Cycle of Fire in hardcover).

Thank you for everything you do, your awesome and have gotten me through a lot, not just 2020.

Welcome, Joseph! Janny talked about the prerequisites for a Stormed Fortress hardcover edition in this thread.

I tried (admittedly years ago) to ‘revert’ the hardcover rights they had not used to open the way for doing a special edition. Got the NO.

It’s the same old story: numbers talk, and frankly, relative to other series, we don’t have them right now. Many series get ‘anniversary’ editions - Wars of Light and Shadows would be in it’s ‘Thirtieth’ anniversary (based on pub date for Curse of the Mistwraith) in 2023…if we could break the piggy bank in the numbers department, anything is possible. Best I can do is write the best finale I can to make this happen. Without the books being featured in shops – the series is invisible except by word of mouth. That pretty much handcuffs me, since self promo burns out readers faster than anything.

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Hi janny, I really really do not understand how your books are not the most popular books for sale. This continually amazes and disappoints me. The world and characters you have created are so vivid and entertaining. I will continue to spread how good they are as much as I can. Please keep creating!!

I am so excited to slowly be nearing the time where the last book in the series is released. For thirty years now I have started the series from the beginning each time another book was published, and each time an extra book added meant that I was given more and more hours of joy when re-visiting a world and characters that have become like family. Thank you and God Bless. Oh, one more thing. Congratulations on your new President. I’m in Brisbane, Australia but even here the relief is felt.

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I have been incommunicado, I know - intensely focused on writing as the critical finale sequence rolls on. There are lot - a whole lot - of intersecting details that I’ve needed to cross check, and passages to work over to be certain no tiny bit gets left out. Work is going extremely well, but it is carefully slow.

I will be posting a page countdown as I go, when I can. (Note: I do not have the internet connected when I write, period, to avoid distractions, so just checking in here is an infrequent and deliberate effort/to keep me fiercely on track).

I have crossed the 800 page mark - today’s draft count is (precisely) 817/undergoing a slight slow down due to a scene shift/and tightening up continuity issues for what will follow so the stitches are all laid in place.

Target for a finished draft of a Light and Shadows novel is always 1000 pages (before I do the melt down on the language/tighten up for a finished manuscript)…some run over this, some run under, so don’t take this as a ‘fixed’ progress bar - let’s see in ‘real time’ if I can grant you a view of each increment of actual progress.

Note: at this stage of the writing I have some chapter files opened up/with ‘placeholder’ notes typed in where I’ve recorded fragments and bits that occurred out of sequence into chronological order so I don’t omit those bits of inspiration as I compose the draft for those sections. These ‘pages’ are not included in the draft count given to date.

The current scene being written is the latter half of sub chapter 12a.

Here we go…

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Thanks for the update Janny.

Out of curiosity how many draft pages was Peril’s Gate on the first draft?