Had a few questions and comments about the System Apocalypse after Book 2 was released.  One comment I’ve seen is that Book 2 was more of a ‘filler’ book, which seems strange to me. I guess what people are looking for is somewhat different than what I envision(ed). Here’s roughly what I’m working on:

Arc 1 (First Trilogy)

Introduction of the System to Earth and basically takes place in 1 year.

Book 1 basically sets the scene and deals with John’s response to it.  Book 2 is a coming of age for John and a realisation of what he is and what he needs to do. It also continues to play out the changes including the Dungeons and Swarms.

Book 3 has the world shaping up to what it will eventually be with high level zones established, big nasty monsters running around and the conclusion of the Whitehorse arc.

Arc 2 (Second Trilogy)

By the way, everything from this point on is nebulous. I’m a panster not a plotter, so everything I have here is rough ideas.

The three books (and this might easily be more!) in this arc cover Earth. I tenatively have Canada & North America to be dealt with in Book 1 (it might be book 2 for the US actually) so there’ll be timeskips and time compression galore

Book 2 or 3 will cover a wider range of areas and continents. We’ll definitely see what happens in Europe & Asia, and we might see a big timeskip as Earth slowly redefines itself along with humanity.

Arc 3 (Third Trilogy)

This arc basically takes us out of Earth and into the wider Galactic scene. We finally see some of the other worlds that have been hinted at and will basically conclude John’s journey.

A word of caution

Now, I call them trilogy’s because I like writing in 3’s. These arcs are also a bit more malleable since I expect I’ll be time skipping a lot more in Arcs 2 and 3.

Tentatively, what I’ll probably do is write the entire series as best I can in the above arcs and then fill in the blanks later.,   Part of it is that writing the same thing for each city will get repetitive, and if there’s an interesting plot for a city, it might take up a whole book.  Rather than derail the overall arcs, I might hold off on writing that and skip pass to write that plot as an individual ‘stand alone’ book later.

That being said – ‘pantser’. I might have an overall idea of what each scenario / book / theme is going for, but the eventual book is often different from what I planned. Often better too.

Now, before anyone asks.  Book 3 is being written right now. I’m about 15% done. It is VERY unlikely to be out before end of the year since my day job gets very busy during this period.  Expect it maybe February?