Thoughts on finishing 'The World Revealed'

I am writing the last few words of 'The World Revealed'. It has been 50,000 words since 01 Jan 2011 and the manuscript is about 180,000 words in total.

I've been writing 'The Binding Returned' and 'The World Revealed' with each chapter in a separate file. It makes each milestone a little more tangible. Finish a chapter, close the file. Back it up in as many places as possible in case the 'Sara B' sinks thanks to the next storm, tsunami, or act of personal stupidity.

I wrote 'The Binding Returned with no margins on the page, and a small font, so I could see a lot of words at the same time. When I put proper margins on the page, and a normal font, I found the chapters were rather long. So for 'The World Revealed' I tried to stick with more normal layout parameters, which has meant the chapters are shorter, and I hope the pace feels a little faster.

Although I keep track of my daily writing in the necessary spreadsheet, and have daily and weekly goals to meet, I have never quite noticed the total. 'The Binding Returned' is about 195,000 words, which I managed to squeeze in 550 pages when I formatted the book for Createspace. A couple of weeks ago 'The World Reveled' had about 60 chapters, and 175,000 words, and according to my outline had another 20 chapters to go. It was getting too long.

The next chapters were also drifting into events that should be in the third book 'The End Of The Nightlord' since they begin the direct conflict between Hamish (the main character) and the Nightlords. Having realized I was at the end of book 2, I've now had to end the book – wrap up the plot threads and set up the next installment. I've had to do a little thinking to sort out exactly where I want to leave the reader. Middle books in a trilogy suffer from being middle books. They carry on from the first novel, but then are meant to leave the reader desperate for the third and final book.

I hope 'The Binding Returned' is strong enough to get readers interested I the series, and then that 'The World Revealed' leaves them thirsting for 'The End of The Nightlord'.

The next 4 books - 'The Mastery Of Magic', 'The Ending War', 'The Period Of Prophecy', and 'The Time Of Testing' will be stand-alone novels covering subsequent generations over the next couple hundred years following the events of the first 3 books.