Okay, I’ve finally finished the edits on Book Two of my YA trilogy Dreams of Fire and Gods and it was submitted to my publisher at 1am this morning.
Now I’m going to take a little break from fantasy and try to finish the Dogs of Cyberwar serial. More than one person has been asking me to do that and it has been ten months since the first book came out. Not really a long time in traditional publishing, but practically forever in eBook publishing!
My original plan was for Dogs to be a trilogy of novellas, under 20k words each. (The first was about 17k words.) I planned on releasing it as a serial, with each one coming out maybe six months after the last. But that turned out to be a bad idea. As my publisher explained at a workshop last March, the only way serials really work in the eBook market is if the parts are released very quickly — say one to two months apart. So it’s far better to write the entire thing before submitting it, so the publisher can space it out accordingly and put a “Coming Soon!” image of the next cover up.
So the plan has changed a bit. I’m hoping to finish parts 2 and 3 this fall and submit them. I can’t guarantee what my publisher will do with them, but we’ve discussed releasing all three parts as one eBook. Perhaps parts 2 and 3 will also be released as novellas — I’m not sure.
Part two (called A Mote in the Eye) is actually one-third to one-half done, depending upon what its final length turns out to be. I’ll be putting an excerpt up on my blog later this week, once I’ve gone over it to refresh my memory about where I’ve left off.
One final note: I don’t yet know the name for the trilogy, even though I should have a title for it by now. The Dogs of Cyberwar (referring to the security force Connor and Luis have to fight in the first novella) is just the name for part one. Part two is A Mote in the Eye (referring to Connor going up against B.A.L.O.R., who is named after a giant in Celtic mythology with a single giant eye that destroyed everything it looked upon). I’m not sure about the title for part three yet.
Jamie Fessenden's Blog 
Sounds like you have a really dynamic imagination! Look forward to hearing more about the trilogy and hope it goes well
Thanks!
I’m SO happy a seriel is happening! It seems I have a weakness for sci-fi gay romance, which is ABSURDELY specific but there ya go.
If you’re taking suggestions for a name for the series how about The twin worlds trilogy? I mean Conner and Luis come from very different backgrounds, move in different worlds and then there’s the whole ‘real’ vs ‘cyber’ world thing.
I didn’t spend ages thinking about this. Promise. I’ll stop gushing now. I stopped by to say thanks for the awesome story and then found out you’re doing a sequel so yeah. Day made. Thanks again!
I’m glad you like it. Thanks for the suggestion, but I’ve already decided to call the series The BALOR Cycle (hearkening back to Irish mythology). There will actually be two sequels. Book two (A Mote in the Eye) has been stopping and starting for a while, but now that I’m writing full-time, I expect to finally finish it this summer, and book three as well.
I’ve put up progress meters on this blog so readers can see what I’m up to and whether the stories are moving forward. And by all means feel free to light a fire under me if it isn’t moving! 🙂