Big things have been afoot in the Chronicle of the Sons plan, lately.

As I mentioned in various earlier State of Writing posts, the plan for CotS has been for four books, with Of Genesis coming second and going over the same timeline as All Flames Cast, but from the POVs of some of the antagonists. As I set out to outline this, things started pretty smoothly. I got through an almost complete checkpoint list, and wrote a couple of character sketch scenes to help get a feel for the new POVs.

And that’s where I hit a wall. With one notable exception (we’ll revisit this in a bit), none of the characters excited me. I didn’t want to write them. Their stories didn’t feel right. On top of that, I realized that doing this as a second book would completely derail the narrative momentum built up at the end of AFC.

So, CotS is going back to a trilogy.

Pretty much as soon as I made this decision, there was a huge weight that lifted. I was truly excited again. I get to go back to Harael and company, everyone from AFC, and continue their stories. I’m almost giddy about it.

The resulting structure change is going to be kind of weird, though. The original plan called for four books:

All Flames Cast

Of Genesis

Sons of Oblivion

The Faithful

With OG coming out, Sons of Oblivion is getting renamed, though I haven’t settled on anything yet. It’s getting the working title Of Genesis, though, because while things wouldn’t have worked with the original OG plan and characters, there are still some important things in that story that need to happen to make the series as a whole work out…and that’s where that other character I mentioned earlier comes in. He’s gonna stick around for the new Of Genesis, albeit in a smaller role.

I’ve begun work on a completely new outline, and it’s flying by. The story just works so much better this way. That’s not to say that this won’t be a challenge, though. All Flames Cast came in at a shade over 143k on the second draft, with three major POVs and three much smaller POVs.

My goal for this new Of Genesis is to clock it in at closer to 100k, but there are five major POVs in this one. It’s going to be a new exercise in pacing and viewpoint juggling. One way or another, however, Chronicle of the Sons is going to end up at three books.

And so I embark on a new journey with a bunch of characters whom I’ve grown to love. You can all laugh at me when I miss my deadline, but I’m hoping to have a first draft of CotS book two finished by the end of 2016.

10k a month is doable, right?