It’s Tuesday, 2/25/14. On Saturday, 2/22/14 I finished my Giant Robot book. At the moment it’s titled Giant Robot Planetary Competition: Entry Level (GRPC 1). Yes, it’s a long title, I know.

To say I had fun writing this book would be an understatement. I had an absolute blast. I couldn’t type the words fast enough. It took twists I didn’t see coming. There were some changes that just flowed with the story until our hero thought all was lost. It was almost too much fun to have legally.

When I started writing the book it was intended to be around 80,000 words. I had 3 POV characters and it was set in my V&A Shipping universe (Vic, Joey, and the rest make an appearance). I had most scenes plotted out and it was going to be roughly 40 chapters (around 2000 words per chapter).

Well, it didn’t want to play along. I know the rules to the V&A Shipping universe, but the trouble was this is an entirely different part of that universe. So there was a lot of world building that needed to be done that I hadn’t anticipated. Introducing the giant robot technology as well as the pilot implants. The competition, the teams, the team positions, practicing with the giant robot, the actual competition and the rules, the different types of robots.

Yes, it got a little out of hand, but I did my best to drop things in there a little at a time and not just dump it all in there at one time. As I have a tendency to do, there’s a lot of conversation and internal monologue. There’s also ramifications for events during the competition I wasn’t expecting and the end was completely different than where I thought it was going to go.

So in the end, the book weighs in at 96,420 words. A majority of those words (just over 82,000) were written this year. It’s been a whirlwind start to the year and I can only hope to keep it going.

I did take Sunday off from writing. After knocking out 49,000 words in 20 days, I felt I’d earned a day off. I was twitchy most of the day to get  back at the keyboard, but I refrained.

Last night I did sit down for about an hour and pounded out 1500 words in Asteroid Bunnies (the next book I’ll be writing). This is also going to be a fun book. My plan for this one is only 30,000 words, but we’ll see what happens. I’m already planning on Astel 2 after this one and then I’ll jump into Life of Lists. We’ll see how the year shapes up. I’ve got big plans and it’d be nice to hit a few of them.

I’d better get at it!

Until Next Time!

WOO WOO!