Thursday, October 12, 2006

Digging Words.

Well, I can definitely say that today at 4.35 I saved Hilldiggers with the certainty that it can now wing its way to Macmillan. It’s a great feeling. Now I must return my attention to Line War, which at present stands at a mere 7000 words (Hilldiggers is 141,000 – just a little smaller than Brass Man).

With the completion of this book my word count, for Macmillan, now stands at over a million. In one of those silly calculations, instigated by my dad, I’ve worked out something daft. He asked me what that total would add up to in distance. I duly worked out an average word count per line of text them measured a line. It turns out that (just in the books) I write at a rate of about a mile a year. Since the first word of Gridlinked I’ve covered about seven miles. My hope is to circumnavigate the Earth, but I rather suspect I won’t live that long.

Ah well.

3 comments:

Kirby Uber said...

there's that mention of your life expectance again. you are honor bound not to toss your mortal coil until i get to the UK.

oh, you know, if it works out for you, sticking around several more decades would also be nice.

Anonymous said...

Hi Neal

Is Hilldiggers going to be part of the Brass Man "series"? or is it a stand alone novel?

Neal Asher said...

Kirby, despite my innate pessimism I'll probably end up being an ancient SF writer - criticised by the new wave VR creators.

e.jim, Hilldiggers is set in the Polity but stands alone. There's references readers of my other books will recognise, but not having read those books won't detract from it e.g. the main character, the Polity Consul Assessor David McCrooger, is an 'old captain'.