With Virginia’s permission, I’ve decided to start snippeting from the first draft of 1634: The Bavarian Crisis. Virginia finished the draft several months ago, and we’ve been sitting on it because it serves as the political sequel to 1634: The Baltic War, which Dave Weber and I haven’t even started writing yet.

      However, we’re now far enough along – and 1634: The Bavarian Crisis is long enough – that by the time we get to the snerky parts of the novel Dave and I should have finished 1634: The Baltic War and I’ll be able to break off from 1634: The Bavarian Crisis and start snippeting the prequel.

      Then – probably toward the end of this year or early next year – I’ll start snippeting the final draft of this novel after Virginia and I finish it.

      In the meantime, however, given that snippets have been few and far between lately, I see no reason not to start snippeting from the first draft.

      I will stress that this is a first draft, not a finished one. Virginia did all of the writing, and, as you’ll see, left places here and there for me to add the material that I’ll be adding. I’ve also done some line-editing of the first part of the book, but not most of it. Still, there shouldn’t be any drastic changes between this draft and the final one.

      Since the novel is very long – 200,000 words, even in this first draft – I’ll be snippeting on a three-times-a-week schedule. I’ve got enough material already to snippet for... oh, at least eight months before I break off.

      As usual (assuming I don’t forget what day it is): Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I’ll be posting the snippets in two conferences: 1632 Tech Manual and Mutter of Demons.

Eric
January 3, 2005

All text formatting errors are wholly the fault of Jim Baen and the way he delivers our fix. :-)

Why am I doing this?