I recently received an email from a reader who wondered how long it took me to write Dark Fire – the answer is over 2000 hours from start to publication. Translate that to weeks, and it’s 50 40-hour work weeks. Crossover took over 1500.

I will admit that I marvel at authors who can write 10+ books a year. Granted, they are usually writing in a different genre than fantasy fiction, but still, I doff my hat to them.

My books take a long time because there are many storylines – the hallmark of a good plot – and I have to make sure I’m not dropping or breaking any “threads” as I write. Then, there’s checking and cross-checking to make sure the books are seamless, and readers don’t find errors.

As an example, just as I was about to sign off Dark Fire after a final read, I suddenly had an urge to check the description of Feyree Lord Andamion in Crossover. Good thing! It seems small, but in Crossover he had a silver crown; I had slipped and changed it to gold in Dark Fire. Fixed that!

Such details are important (I think) and help create the escapist experience of joing the feyree in their realm. And my reviewers agree. Already Dark Fire has received stellar reviews from three publications, and I’m looking forward to earning more. Those are the things that make working 2000 hours on a book pay off.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 12:49 pm and is filed under Crossover. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.