Will There Be a Sequel to The White Tree?

Short answer: Yeah. I’m working on it right now, in fact. I’m about 160 pages into the first draft, which I envision being about four times that long.

What does that mean for its completion date? Well, it’ll be at least another three months until the first draft is done, and more like 4-5. I’ll need to give it at least a couple weeks to cool off after that before I start revising, which will probably take another 1-2 months, say. It’s almost March now, so barring any localized tornadoes, meteor strikes, etc. (and who ever heard of a natural disaster in Southern California?), I would guess it’ll be ready somewhere between August and October.

Why so long? Yeah, I know, Amanda Hocking can write a book in 9 days. Well, for one thing, it’s going to be a long book. Most novels fall into the 70,000-120,000 word range. YA, paranormal, and romance tend to be on the shorter side of that range, which is part of why you often see those authors with so many titles and such fast turnarounds. Also they are very prolific and dedicated.

Epic fantasy’s a whole ‘nother beast. I’ve got this book outlined for about 175-200K words. In other words (if I’ll have any left at this point), about twice as long as your average book. I’m not sure how long the longest epic fantasy runs, but those 1000+ page tomes from George R.R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss and the like have to be 300-400K words. Man. Typing that out, I suddenly understand why it’s taking them 4-5 years between books.

Anyway, so right, a sequel. And yes, there will be a sequel to that, adding up to the trilogy that is mandatory by all bylaws of Big Fat Fantasy Epics. The Cycle of Arawn. Don’t worry, I’ve already got the entire story arc planned out, more or less. The series won’t bloat beyond that. And in terms of plotting, if you’ve read The White Tree, you know the series isn’t going to be the story of one vast quest to find a Master Sword and defeat a Ganon. There will be an overall arc to it, but it’s going to be a little different than the unified quest story personified by The Lord of the Rings and books like it.

And I think that’s all I’ll say for now. I need to get back to actually writing the thing!