Fantasy Opus - 190,820 Words

A while back I started measuring my progress against the word count of other well known fantasy novels. I've now written 190,820 (unedited) words, which is more than Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire. In fact it's more than the first two Harry Potter books combined.

I don't have a specific word count in mind, although I expect the final count will be around 300K which is just over 3 Hobbits!

Even after I've finished and edited the novel (which I'm pretty sure will be split into three) I'll need to:

• Design three sets of cover art (and probably a cover for the complete works).
• Create a map
• Format the novel for the Kindle store
• Format the novel for paperback
• Get some Fantasy Bloggers to review it
• Promote it through social media
• Organize a "Click" advertising campaign.

I have no expectations for the work, but it's the biggest story I've ever held in my head, and it'll be a relief to get the entire narrative down in print.

I've spent much of today just trying to come up with a name for a new character, that hasn't already been used by another fantasy author. Accidental plagiarism is a nightmare. My story originally had a region accidentally named the same as a region in the Lord of the Rings. It means I need to do a web search for every single name.

So I now need to write at least 10K words a month to complete the story by the end of 2017. It's a tall order and I'm currently unsure I'll make it.

Bye for now...

John Howes