My first published novel, The Blackguard, is about 60,000 words long. I’m going to try and explain it in ten sentences.
Props to Diotima’s Ladder for this idea.
The Blackguard is about oppressed minorities getting run over by the march of modernity, except here those minorities are white supremacists who practice Chinese-style foot-binding, East African-style scarification and Native American-style warrior shamanism.
The Blackguard is the forces of imperialism, represented by a young engineer with no use for “slave morality” and a willingness to trade happiness for glory.
The Blackguard is the bright side of losing your heritage.
The Blackguard is the dark side of losing your heritage.
The Blackguard is trying to bring the ubermensch into the world, succeeding and then really wishing you hadn’t.
The Blackguard is race treason as heroism, pity as disgrace and rebellion as the only means of escape.
The Blackguard is wondering if bad intentions matter when they lead to good consequences.
The Blackguard is deciding whether your identity is something you’ve chosen or something that fell on you when you were born.
The Blackguard is overcoming the heat of revenge with the chill of calculation.
The Blackguard is the triumph of the things we make ourselves over the things we’re made from.
If you’d like to give The Blackguard a try, please click here.
Ben Garrido's Author Page 
Powerful sentences. Think I’ll have to buy this one.
I’m honored. 🙂
“The Blackguard is wondering if bad intentions matter when they lead to good consequences.”
SOLD!
It’ll be a little while before I finish this fat stack of sci-fi books that I just bought, but it’s sitting right here in my Kindle.
Thank you so much. 🙂
I hope you enjoy it and please do let me know when The Philosopher King is available.
Oh, It’ll be a while. I just started working on the 2nd draft today. Plus I need to get the word count down to about half of what I have. We shall see. I’ll let you know!
How many words are you up to?
126,801…and I just thought of a new ending, so I’ll actually be adding to that. Hopefully I can cut enough fat off the rest though!
That’s only about 350-400 pages. I think you’d be fine.
That said, my writing process is weird. I’ve never done a draft that made my product smaller. The Blackguard was originally about 42,000 words, or about 10,000 words too small to be published. 😛
My next book, coming out in a couple months I hope, is about 110,000 and it checks in at 335 pages.
Not too long for a first novel you think? I’ve been told to watch out for that.
Oh yeah, that whole thing. I don’t know. Honestly, the industry is in such upheaval right now it’s hard to tell.
I think, generally, you get more leeway in literary/philosophical works.
That’s a good technique. I like the idea of boiling a whole book down into a series of sentences. Might have to try it on a few from off the shelf 🙂
Do you have a book of your own or were you thinking of applying this treatment to someone else’s work? If you have your own, I’d like to see it.
Thanks,
Ben
Was thinking of applying it to the next book I read. 🙂
I’m intrigued. It will be next on my list!
Awesome!
I have an interactive feature on the Kindle Version and a quasi interactive feature on the paper version that allows you to get into some of the philosophy and social science that went into the book.
I hope you enjoy it! 🙂
Fun game, I’m checking it out!
I’ve enjoyed many of your posts here and look forward to reading your next! 🙂
Feel free to check out my writing about publishing: publishinginsights.org
Sherry
Glad you enjoyed it. I’m hopping over to your page right now. 🙂