New Honor Novel?

OrlandoNative wrote:In any case, the REAL problem here isn't in the *writing*, it's in the *publishing*. David has often managed to churn out a book within a reasonable time, but there have been times it's taken an additional 6-8 months, or possibly even more, before the particular publisher makes it available to his readers.

You say this happens "often"? I challenge you to name even two examples of this.

OrlandoNative wrote:

SWM wrote:But that's what David has said. There will be a couple more books set in the circa 1920 PD era. Then, there would be a time gap in the story, picking up many years later to show the next and final phase of the confrontation.

As that time gets closer, he may have to modify that stance. It doesn't seem well thought out. I can't see a galaxy either at - or on the verge of - war just standing still for 10 or 15 years while the next generation of Harringtons grow up, get educated, and trained in the future version of the armed forces; as they'd have to be before they could play any significant roles. The "dislocation" would just be too great for his reading audience. I think there would be a significant backlash. It would be just like taking the Safehold series from LAMA to after the return of the Archangels, with none of the intervening years events narrated. And, before you say anthologies of short stories can fill in the gaps, I'd suggest there'd have to be a *lot* of them; if one is going to write all those, then one might as well write novels, instead.

Um, you do know that David has also said that there will only be 1 or 2 more Safehold novels in the current generation, and then it will skip forward 20 years to the Angelic Return? With none of the intervening years narrated?

SWM wrote:But that's what David has said. There will be a couple more books set in the circa 1920 PD era. Then, there would be a time gap in the story, picking up many years later to show the next and final phase of the confrontation.

OrlandoNative wrote:As that time gets closer, he may have to modify that stance. It doesn't seem well thought out. I can't see a galaxy either at - or on the verge of - war just standing still for 10 or 15 years while the next generation of Harringtons grow up, get educated, and trained in the future version of the armed forces; as they'd have to be before they could play any significant roles. The "dislocation" would just be too great for his reading audience. I think there would be a significant backlash. It would be just like taking the Safehold series from LAMA to after the return of the Archangels, with none of the intervening years events narrated. And, before you say anthologies of short stories can fill in the gaps, I'd suggest there'd have to be a *lot* of them; if one is going to write all those, then one might as well write novels, instead.

I could see spacing things out a *bit*, with perhaps a few years between the sections of the story line being covered, but not more than that.

I disagree, O Flordia resident. It has been done before, most notably by E.E. Smith in his Lensman series, where after the first two books he pushed it about 60 years ahead (IIRC) and in the last book moved it 30 or so years ahead, to allow the children of the main character to take center stage.

And RFC is as old as I am, so I bet he remembers those stories.

I think the two books will do to dispose of the Solarian League and probably Darius (with the belief that in stopping them there, the MAligment has been defeated), leaving 20-30 years later for the Renessianic (sp) Factor to become a Galactic Power and face off with the "Children of the Honorverse" for the final fate of Humanity.

Not hard to contemplate at all.

SWM wrote:

OrlandoNative wrote:In any case, the REAL problem here isn't in the *writing*, it's in the *publishing*. David has often managed to churn out a book within a reasonable time, but there have been times it's taken an additional 6-8 months, or possibly even more, before the particular publisher makes it available to his readers.

You say this happens "often"? I challenge you to name even two examples of this.

Jonathan named one, and the upcoming Safehold novel "Hell's Foundations Quiver" is another. That's 2 for *David* alone. Challenge met, I believe. I doubt any of us have any idea how many times it may have happened with other author's books that we might be interested in.

For that matter, since paperbacks generally take about a year to be published *after* the publishing of the hardcover (if the author is sufficiently known for the publisher to publish first in hardcover to begin with, that is); it wasn't quite so much of an issue. Also, David wasn't spread as thin - some of the series he now regularly writes for didn't exist then, so there wasn't as much "competition" for his time for any particular next title.

SWM wrote:Um, you do know that David has also said that there will only be 1 or 2 more Safehold novels in the current generation, and then it will skip forward 20 years to the Angelic Return? With none of the intervening years narrated?

He may have to re-think that too. Unless, of course, the Temple's Jihad totally collapses.

Given the fact that he's so far devoted 2 and a fraction books *just* basically to the situation in Siddarmark, it doesn't seem like he could do justice to Desnair, Dohlar, Harchong, and the Temple Lands, not to mention Zion itself, in just 2 more books. Unless, again, they're about 10,000 pages each. Not if he wants to keep his readership happy. I don't think *anyone* reading the series would like that. Looks what's happened in just the 5 or so years since Merlin "awoke". That's taken 7 (soon 8) books to cover. You really think that the next 20 years aren't going to be memorable or important to the complete story?

For that matter, there are times I'm not all that happy about him skipping over most of the War Against the Fallen. It might have made more sense (from readership perspective) to have taken the first couple of chapters of OAR about the Terran Federation and the beginning colonization of Safehold, added coverage of the WAF, and then made OAR start with Nimue's PICA awakening as the SECOND book in the series.

Of course, Khody's journal in HFQ will probably give us *some* insight into the WAF period, but it's not like the "blow by blow" we've gotten for everything else.

OrlandoNative wrote:

SWM wrote:You say this happens "often"? I challenge you to name even two examples of this.

Jonathan named one, and the upcoming Safehold novel "Hell's Foundations Quiver" is another. That's 2 for *David* alone. Challenge met, I believe. I doubt any of us have any idea how many times it may have happened with other author's books that we might be interested in.

No, Hell's Foundations Quiver does not qualify. RFC was many months late and did not get that book in on time. So this is not an instance where David got the book in on time and the publication was delayed.

SWM wrote:

OrlandoNative wrote:Jonathan named one, and the upcoming Safehold novel "Hell's Foundations Quiver" is another. That's 2 for *David* alone. Challenge met, I believe. I doubt any of us have any idea how many times it may have happened with other author's books that we might be interested in.

No, Hell's Foundations Quiver does not qualify. RFC was many months late and did not get that book in on time. So this is not an instance where David got the book in on time and the publication was delayed.

Mmmm... the point was about the *publisher* "excessively" delaying publishing of the novel *one they had it*. Which HFQ should fit.

Actually, from threads in the Safehold forum, while David *was* late in getting the manuscript (well, actually in this case a computer file) submitted, it wasn't by all that much. I think less than a month. Given the nature of the industry, however, it's hard to believe that any publishing schedule doesn't have time built in to it for contingencies.

Hutch wrote:quote="SWM"]But that's what David has said. There will be a couple more books set in the circa 1920 PD era. Then, there would be a time gap in the story, picking up many years later to show the next and final phase of the confrontation.

OrlandoNative wrote:As that time gets closer, he may have to modify that stance. It doesn't seem well thought out. I can't see a galaxy either at - or on the verge of - war just standing still for 10 or 15 years while the next generation of Harringtons grow up, get educated, and trained in the future version of the armed forces; as they'd have to be before they could play any significant roles. The "dislocation" would just be too great for his reading audience. I think there would be a significant backlash. It would be just like taking the Safehold series from LAMA to after the return of the Archangels, with none of the intervening years events narrated. And, before you say anthologies of short stories can fill in the gaps, I'd suggest there'd have to be a *lot* of them; if one is going to write all those, then one might as well write novels, instead.

I could see spacing things out a *bit*, with perhaps a few years between the sections of the story line being covered, but not more than that.

I disagree, O Flordia resident. It has been done before, most notably by E.E. Smith in his Lensman series, where after the first two books he pushed it about 60 years ahead (IIRC) and in the last book moved it 30 or so years ahead, to allow the children of the main character to take center stage.

And RFC is as old as I am, so I bet he remembers those stories.

I think the two books will do to dispose of the Solarian League and probably Darius (with the belief that in stopping them there, the MAligment has been defeated), leaving 20-30 years later for the Renessianic (sp) Factor to become a Galactic Power and face off with the "Children of the Honorverse" for the final fate of Humanity.

Not hard to contemplate at all.[/quote]

Actually, Doc may have learned something from that. He didn't repeat it in either the Skylark or the Subspace series.

And, in reality, while there *were* gaps in the first book (after all, we're talking millions of years there in total), I'm not so sure about your point as to Children of the Lens. We do know when the Kinnison's wed, but I don't think we know exactly when the children were born. That could have happened while their father was off doing some of the narrated actions against Boskone. So the "gap" may actually be minimal. Remember, some of the story took months, if not years, from beginning to end, especially the times where Kimball needed to build up a new "identity" for his investigation or infiltration. Remember his stint as the Tyrant with Gharlane. That's only one example. In any case, the children are *young*. Most likely in their teens. I really doubt it's 30 years down the road.

Getting back to the Honorverse, however, it's taken around 7 books (arguably, perhaps, in the case of the first Torch book) just to get to this point in the hostilities between the Alliance and the Solarian League, Mesan Alignment, and their cronies. So far, almost nothing is still known about the Alignment; as far as the League is concerned, only the central administrative system for ONE sector (out of how many?) has been conquered; and Mesa itself *may* have been (not clear at this point), though it would appear *after* most of the Alignment moved out. Unless just about every character suddenly becomes completely inept, it's hard to see how coming to some believable status with the League - even if it's only temporary - could possible occur in just 2 books. Especially since it's apparent from ART that the League isn't just going to surrender. There would have to be all kinds of actions in the Fringe, the Verge, the Shell, even the Core before any kind of "status quo" could be reached. The economic issues alone could take months or years to be fully felt; there's Beowulf and the League's attitudes.actions towards it; and, at some point, it's hard not to envision an Alliance fleet not visiting the Sol System, if only to accept the League's surrender or to force some kind of truce.

Plus, the Alliance has no idea about the Alignment's actual capabilities, or where Darius is located. For that matter, after all the books detailing the Havenite war, no one but HAVEN knows where Bolthole is. I doubt Darius, with the Alignment being far more secretive than Haven ever was, is going to be easy enough to find in just a couple of more novels.

Maintaining interest in one's readers in a series isn't just usually a matter of cranking out books. Stand alone, it's not so critical, but in a series the sequence of events has to be both interesting AND believable. Readers want to know why and how things happened, not just that they did, especially if they're critical (or even just somewhat important) to the overall story line.

Look at it this way. If one says, "The Spanish Armada sailed, and the English fleet clobbered it"; that may be factual, but it's not a STORY. The STORY is in the details. The weather, the maneuvering, the sayings of various individuals that may have become historic, their actions, and the battles of the various individual ships.

Or let's look at Shadow of Freedom. What's more satisfying and interesting from a reader's viewpoint and furthering of the story line - the story of the events in Saltash as given, or, say, the report "We went to Saltash. The merchant ships were there, they wouldn't release them, so we destroyed the local fleet, attacked the space station, and freed the ships and crews." Both cover the main facts, but I'd say the story in SoF is much, much more interesting, believable, and certainly advances the general story line better than the the latter.

Unless everything suddenly collapses, which would be a colossal letdown, I just don't see how 2 books could possibly do justice with what would have to happen to even ALLOW a justifiable gap in the story line, as far as the majority of the readership would be concerned.

OrlandoNative wrote:Mmmm... the point was about the *publisher* "excessively" delaying publishing of the novel *one they had it*. Which HFQ should fit.

Actually, from threads in the Safehold forum, while David *was* late in getting the manuscript (well, actually in this case a computer file) submitted, it wasn't by all that much. I think less than a month. Given the nature of the industry, however, it's hard to believe that any publishing schedule doesn't have time built in to it for contingencies.

No, the publishing schedule most definitely does not have time built into it for contingencies. If a manuscript comes in late, it completely messes up the schedule. There's a reason editors push authors so hard to get their manuscripts in on time. If they miss their publication slot, the publisher may not be able to fit them in for many more months. It can trigger a whole series of delays, as it cascades through the editors, the proofreaders, the layout specialists, and the printers. And neither Baen nor Tor actually operate their own printers--they essentially rent time on printers and bookbinders owned by someone else. So they can't even control the print schedule if they wanted to. If they want to slip something in because it missed its earlier spot, it takes a lot of negotiation and compromise, and will probably cost a lot in both money and compromise offers.

I've seen a month's delay in submission cause up to a year's delay in publication.

I've been told that one of the reasons for the errors and typos is that there isn't enough time to stomp them out.

Plus, the detailed editing that is needed just isn't occurring due to time. For example, AAC needed some serious editing, but I'm told it was either publish it now or wait months and David had other things to do.

The defects in CoG are much more obvious, but there was also not enough time to fix them due to David and Eric's schedule issues prior to the submission deadline.