Break from Killer Eyes

I am not going to pull the trigger yet on sending Killer Eyes to my publisher. I am waiting for a beta reader to read it through, and then I will read it through one more time myself. That's for the best, because every time I've submitted a manuscript in the past, I've found something in it I wanted to change, and that becomes annoying, both to me, and to the publisher.

Meanwhile, I'm finally back to work on my long John Dunn novel. It's over 120,000 words, and by far the longest book I've written. The hassle is that I wrote it before I learned all about the 3rd person limited POV, and like Killer of Killers, The Vase, and Killer Eyes, I have to go over the whole thing and make sure that all of those POV issues are fixed.

It wasn't so bad in the first three books, mainly because they weren't so long. Killer of Killers clocked in at about 89,000 words, The Vase is about 88,000 words, and Killer Eyes, after revisions, turned out to be about 95,000 words. So a 120,000 plus word manuscript is somewhat more challenging. And especially since there are a bunch of characters in it.

That is one of my traits in writing books--I have a lot of characters in them. To me, it makes the story more interesting. And the John Dunn story sure has a lot of characters! There's John Dunn, the main character, his wife Catherine Pierce, Theophilus Shepstone, the Natal Secretary for Native Affairs, who is the main antagonist in the story, there's Captain Joshua Walmsley, John's mentor, Captain Walmsley's wife, Maria, Sir Henry Francis Fynn, who knew the legendary Zulu king Shaka Zulu, and Anglican Bishop William Colenso.
Of course there's the story's current Zulu King Cetshwayo, his father King Mpande, his brother Dabulamanzi, and his half brother, Mbulazi, who he kills in the Zulu Civil War, other brothers of Cetshwayo, and a whole lot of other characters, including more white colonists, and more African natives, like Xegwana, John Dunn's head servant.

Many of the white characters include the British military men, such as Lord Chelmsford who led the British forces in the Anglo-Zulu War in 1879. And I include most of the major battles from that war in the story. So you've got the British soldiers, officers, and of course the Zulus who commanded the Zulu forces. Yes, it's a long story, and it's very in depth about that period. But mainly, it's about John Dunn and his experiences between the years 1853 and 1879. Back to work.