Island of Fog

This is my pet project, something I thought of years ago and first started writing in earnest around the end of 2003. I posted Chapters 1-8 on the Online Writer's Workshop for Science Fiction & Fantasy (OWWSSF) between February and April 2004, and it received quite nice reviews. Then I went away for a while, did some more work on it, and posted Chapters 1-13 around September to November 2004. After that my web business dried up a little and my wife started to work from home, so I had to spend more time with the young 'un—which meant less writing time. So the novel kind of went into production hell for a while.

In September 2005 I started into it once more, and completely revamped a lot of it, adding new stuff at the start and ditching other things I didn't think were working. I got some overall opinions of the novel so far, and got some great crits from Jeremy Yoder. The biggest problem I had to sort out now was verbosity, so in late October 2005 I got stuck in and cut a lot of text (I refined the first seven chapters into four, cutting 10,000 words). I think these first four chapters are as close to final now as they ever will be, apart from the odd word here and there as I come across them, and as more crits come in.

As it stands today (November 20, 2005) I'm working through the rest of the book and cutting, cutting, cutting (and adding small elements here and there). Overall I expect the novel to be around 80,000 words. Meanwhile I've posted the first four chapters as a Preview Edition at Lulu.com for feedback purposes.

Keith Robinson
November 20, 2005