{"id":5476,"date":"2019-12-24T03:44:38","date_gmt":"2019-12-24T03:44:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.benjamincheah.com\/?p=5476"},"modified":"2019-12-24T03:44:38","modified_gmt":"2019-12-24T03:44:38","slug":"towards-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kitsuncheah.com\/?p=5476","title":{"rendered":"Towards 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Place<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In January, I set out to write a series. Comprised of one short story and five full-length novels, it is a post-cyberpunk saga set in the world on the brink of a new technological epoch, titled SINGULARITY SUNRISE. Yesterday, I wrote the last word on the last page of the last book. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first draft of the entire SINGULARITY SUNRISE series is complete. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In between writing SINGULARITY SUNRISE, I also found time to complete my cyberpunk horror opus BABYLON BLUES. One short story and three novellas, and the latter two were just a few hundred words away from becoming full-length novels in their own right. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there was THE JUDGE OF THE WASTES, a story I wrote on a whim. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to that, I also published the DUNGEON SAMURAI<\/a> trilogy, and brought HOLLOW CITY<\/a> to market. I concluded two Kickstarters, one for DUNGEON SAMURAI, another for my upcoming work BABYLON BLUES. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2019, I wrote and published more stories than in my entire writing career. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2019 also had its own challenges. New medical issues, new allergies, new expenses, new responsibilities. I don’t talk about my personal life in public, much, but suffice to say that it was the most difficult year I’ve had to date as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back now<\/a>, I realized I’d set overly-ambitious goals for this year. On the other hand, I hadn’t anticipated many of these emerging issues, and the toll they would take on my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To quote myself from January:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to\u00a0Dungeon Samurai<\/em>, I have prepared my next writing projects. I am presently editing the first draft of\u00a0Unmasked<\/em>, my second entry in the Heroes Unleashed universe. Once that is out of the way, I will start work on\u00a0House of War<\/em>, the fourth novel in the Covenant Chronicles series.<\/p>

As you can tell, I seem to have the uncanny ability to write faster than my publishers can get books out the door. Which is why the next major project after\u00a0House of War<\/em>\u00a0will be a self-published series.<\/p>

This project will be my moonshot, my attempt at going pro. It will be a military science fiction \/ cyberpunk series with a touch of fantasy, spanning at least 8 novels and 1 short story. It is my most ambitious project to date, and I pray it will live up to your expectations.<\/p>

All in all, I plan to write at least 9 novels, possibly more. It will take an entire year, possibly longer. But I\u2019m confident that at the end of the process, I will have enough material to jumpstart a full-time fiction career.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

UNMASKED is complete and with Silver Empire. HOUSE OF WAR (now retitled to something else), on the other hand, is delayed. I haven’t started work on it. After all, the previous book, PRINCE OF SHADOWS, hasn’t even been published yet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book market thrives on rapid releases. It makes no sense for me to write a book and then wait an entire year, or longer, before it hits the market. In the time it would take for me to write HOUSE OF WAR, I could finish two<\/em> SINGULARITY SUNRISE stories. I decided to start on SINGULARITY SUNRISE first, then work on HOUSE OF WAR only when PRINCE OF SHADOWS was published. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In hindsight, it was probably the right choice. If I’d worked on HOUSE OF WAR first, SINGULARITY SUNRISE would be incomplete — and neither PRINCE OF SHADOWS nor HOUSE OF WAR would have been published.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for writing 9 novels in 2019, it didn’t quite work out that way. But for good reason: I compressed SINGULARITY SUNRISE from 8 novels to 5. I realized that 3 story ideas simply couldn’t hold their own, so I rolled them up into other books. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just as well that it turned out that way: If I’d gone for 8 novels, SINGULARITY SUNRISE would still be a work in progress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technically I’d written the equivalent of 9 novels this year. SINGULARITY SUNRISE, the two extremely long BABYLON BLUES novellas, and the BABYLON BLUES REMASTERED collection — which, at over 200 thousand words, is a monster as long as any two novels. But that requires a creative interpretation of ‘written’. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that would be cheating, wouldn’t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for my other goals, some were achieved, and some are still a work in progress. To summarise:<\/p>\n\n\n\n