The hardest thing about writing In Enemy Hands turned out to be the size of the story I'd decided to tell, and I think that the fact that it's a volume in a series actually made the difficulty greater. Without going into details and turning this into a "spoiler," I'll just say that many of the events in this novel -- and not just the ones that happen directly to Honor -- are critical to the "future history" of the series. That meant I had to tell about them to be fair to the reader, and before I actually got started writing the book, I had a certain airy confidence that I could make them all fit between two covers. Once I was face to face with the job of getting them squeezed in, however, I found that it would have required something on the order of 250,000 words, which struck me as just a tad long, even for one of my books.Faced with that fact, I decided to split the story line in two so that I could deal properly with both halves of it. It wasn't an easy decision, but I think it was the right one, and even if all the plot strands aren't resolved, I hope most readers will find the conclusion satisfying...and agree that it isn't really a cliff-hanger. Please?
Description:
The hardest thing about writing In Enemy Hands turned out to be the size of the story I'd decided to tell, and I think that the fact that it's a volume in a series actually made the difficulty greater. Without going into details and turning this into a "spoiler," I'll just say that many of the events in this novel -- and not just the ones that happen directly to Honor -- are critical to the "future history" of the series. That meant I had to tell about them to be fair to the reader, and before I actually got started writing the book, I had a certain airy confidence that I could make them all fit between two covers. Once I was face to face with the job of getting them squeezed in, however, I found that it would have required something on the order of 250,000 words, which struck me as just a tad long, even for one of my books.Faced with that fact, I decided to split the story line in two so that I could deal properly with both halves of it. It wasn't an easy decision, but I think it was the right one, and even if all the plot strands aren't resolved, I hope most readers will find the conclusion satisfying...and agree that it isn't really a cliff-hanger. Please?