Statistics

So, the second draft of the current novel weighed in at nearly 124,000 words. The first draft ended at approx 113,000, so it grew more than I anticipated during the re-write. Minus the prologue and epilogue, the 20 chapters averaged about 6100 words each.

I listened to very little variety in music for this book. It was basically three scores, over and over. Compared to the twenty or so I used for "Darkland" this kind of surprised me. Or maybe not.

"King Kong" - James Newton Howard
"The Blue Max" - Jerry Goldsmith
"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" - Patrick Doyle

Towards the end, I added two others for when I needed sneaking around music:

"The Interpreter" - James Newton Howard
"Shadow Conspiracy" - Bruce Broughton

And that was it on the music front. "King Kong" and "Blue Max" were the main ones. This amuses me, as I used to think of "Blue Max" as the score to this novel I came up with years and years ago (and will still write some day) called "Heaven's Debt" that was inspired by being in the redwoods and hearing "Blue Max" for the very first time. The score seemed all about lost innocence and the military to me at the time. And here, I used the music almost strictly for writing Reisher's sections... well, the military flavor was quite applicable, but lost innocence? Um, no. Interesting how fourteen years will change how you hear the same piece of music.

I wish I'd kept track of how many tea bags I went through... probably in the hundreds over the last seven months. I think I averaged 3-5 mugs a writing night.