Finished

[jacey]

I managed to finish the first draft of Spider on the Web after prevaricating for a couple of weeks over the last two chapters. There are one or two things that happened in the final showdown which surprised me and which I had to hurriedly ret-con earlier in the text, but by and large folks ended up where they were supposed to.

I know there are still some things I need to change, but for now I probably need to just leave it and let it settle for a week ot two. It's come in at 117,000 words and I was intending it to be no more than 100,000, so I'll be thinking very carefully about attacking it with pruning shears.

It's definitely the most gritty and adult book I've ever tackled. Whether it's too coarse/explicit or not remains to be seen. It's not porn-level explicit, but it is a fantasy book and there's an optimum level of expectation from fantasy readers that it would be well to take note of.
:-)

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Fantasy is getting grittier, and that's no bad thing.
Well done!

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I feel like I've been through the wringer - there were some nasty scenes in there which were gruelling to write - but I think it has a satisfactory outcome for the survivors. They mostly get what they need, if not what they want.