As I work on The Curse of Steel, I’ve become increasingly aware that my original plot outline was a bit too ambitious. I had a certain amount of the overall story arc that I thought I was going to tell in a single 120-kiloword volume. Actually writing the story, though, has worked out differently.

Right now I’m at about 72 kilowords, and I’m just getting to what I originally thought of as the midpoint of the first novel in the series. More importantly, the dramatic beat that’s coming up soon is feeling more like the climax of a novel’s story, not so much like a mere mid-second-act plot twist.

I think the solution is obvious: treat the upcoming dramatic moment as the climax of a shortened novel, then push a chunk of the original outline into the first sequel. I think the tone of each story will end up feeling more coherent as a result. The move leaves The Curse of Steel unified as a story of heroic action, intrigue, and tribal politics, whereas the next book will be almost entirely about long-distance travel on a quest.

The upshot of all this is that I’m reducing my estimate for the total word count for The Curse of Steel, to 90 kilowords. Which means I’m a lot closer to being done with the first draft than I thought.

Earlier I was thinking of using November (National Novel Writing Month) to crank out 50 kilowords of content for The Curse of Steel. That would have brought me pretty close to the end of the story as originally planned. Now, it looks more likely that I won’t be formally participating in NaNoWriMo. Instead, during November I’ll finish the first draft of this novel, start working on revisions, and also start doing some world-building and constructed-language work for the second novel in the series. I’ll need at least two more naming languages; Kráva will be visiting two new major cultures in the course of that story.

It seems even more likely than before that The Curse of Steel will be finished and ready for release very early in 2020. The working title for the second novel in the series will be The Sunlit Lands.