It worked

27 Mar
Detail of beading on the collar of the dress I made

Detail of beading on the collar of the dress I made

My last post begged a question.

If I made a dress to refresh myself so I could get Book 4 rewritten again, how well did that work?
Pretty well, actually.

I’ve gone through the entire manuscript of The Dwarf’s Legacy at least twice. In addition, I’ve looked at particular sections and reworked them. I’ve addressed everything that all five of my critical readers spotted, and spotted a few more things myself. I’d say the writing and editing is 95 percent done at this point.

What’s left?

  • There are three specific “scenes” I think need more work, so I will go back and adjust those.
  • I have given the manuscript to two of my critical readers for another check, so I am sure I’ll hear back from them soon. Another set of eyes always helps.
  • After all of that is taken care of, I want to let the book “rest” for a few days, then come back and read through the entire book. I need to be sure the story flows properly and the characters are consistent. In fact, I may use part of that time to sketch out how I see a few of the key characters developing in this book, and check what I’ve written against that.

I am hoping that will result, by the end of April, in the release of Book 4, The Dwarf’s Legacy. I know, that’s two months later than expected, but the book is a whole lot better than it was in February. I’m trying to make it worth the wait.

Let me put it this way. I spent hours and hours — about 50 in all — hand-beading the dress I made. It would have been a really nice dress even without all that work; that work put it over the top, and made it truly special. That’s what I’m trying to do with The Dwarf’s Legacy.

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So I made a dress …

24 Mar

Yes, I made a dress ...You’re still waiting for a book, and I went and made a dress.

Permit me to first clarify, it was for my wife, not me. In case you were wondering. Oh, you weren’t wondering, were you? And now you are. Wonderful. Let’s move on …

I made a dress so you can get a book.

Really.

For about a month and a half, I poured every spare hour into rewriting Book 4, The Dwarf’s Legacy. I completed that at the end of January, and passed it off to my critical readers.

And then my “day job” got hectic. I serve as a writer and editor for New Tribes Mission, and through most of February I was pouring myself into getting out the next issue of our magazine.

Then I heard back from all of my critical readers, and there was a lot of work to do. So I tried to do it. I really did. I wanted to get the fourth book to you in February, and then I was sure I could get it out in March. But nothing was working.

So I started making a dress.

You see, when I just can’t write, when I’ve “spent” all my creative writing energy, I need to recharge it. One thing I’ve found works very well is engaging in some creative endeavor totally unrelated to writing.

Like making an Elizabethan gown for my wife.

I completed the dress earlier this month, so I have now begun attacking Book 4 again with vigor, instead of slogging through it. You deserve my best writing. The series deserves my best writing. And now I’ve put myself in a position to deliver that.

It’s taking longer than I wanted it to, but, hey, I’ve still put out four books between two of George RR Martin’s books. (And that’s about all the comparison I’ll do with other authors, especially with other authors who have sold a whole stinking huge lot more books than I have. Which is actually most authors, come to think of it.)

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Getting critical

28 Feb

The Day Magic DiedI’ve now heard back from four of my five critical readers, and I expect to hear from the final one this weekend. So the revisions of Book 4, The Dwarf’s Legacy, will likely happen next week.

What I love about this team of critical readers is how differently they look at things.

Two of them gave me lists of typos and punctuation and grammar issues. In case you were wondering, spell check doesn’t help. I write in Word, and after a certain number of errors, Word just stops trying to spell-check. You reach that point pretty early in a 100,000-word book with a lot of words in made-up languages.

I’m certain that these two lists will mostly coincide, but having two people on the team who think that way means we’re more likely to find all those errors.

Another person is mainly concerned with story issues. She spotted two things in the book that seemed to work out too easily. She also spotted one thing that made no sense – a character suddenly showed up in a scene where it made no sense. That’s because I had the wrong name in the scene. “Where’d he come from?” From a stupid mental lapse. But I have the power to make his disappear. Bwahahahaha! (Sometimes revisions are fun.)

The fourth critical reader tends to look not only at the story, but at broader social issues. Am I reinforcing negative stereotypes, or bad tendencies in culture, or am I challenging them?  She had a field day with The Dwarf’s Legacy, pointing out that one character was quite unjustly maligned, while another was getting away with stuff. And those things fell right in line with how our society, generally speaking, incorrectly treats those kinds of people. That’s not the kind of thing I want to be saying to readers, even subtly. In fact, it might be worse to say things like that subtly. If I said them outright, your defenses would be up. When they’re in the background, they can sneaking into your brains when your guard is down. And that kind of tactic I save for really nefarious messages, like “Buy more books!”

The fifth reader is the kind who is not afraid to let me know what she, as a reader, is thinking at different points. For example, if something irritates her, or if there’s a question she wants answered, she’ll write it right in the manuscript she’s reading. It’s great to have a gauge on what readers are thinking, because that can be tough for a writer to understand.

The good news is that I can see exactly what each of them is talking about, and I’ve already been thinking through how I can address some of these things. I don’t anticipate the revisions taking long, but I do anticipate that they will make the story much better.

Thanks for your patience as I work to ensure that this book is a journey you’ll enjoy.

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Making progress

26 Feb

The Day Magic DiedWe’re continuing to make progress on Book 4, The Dwarf’s Legacy.

Today I’ve given my designer all the files and text and information necessary to, in order:

  • Design the cover of The Dwarf’s Legacy
  • Revise the covers of Books 1, 2 and 3 – The House in the Old Wood, Karia’s Path and The Hall of the Prophetess – in order to include the series logo
  • Design the cover for Book 5, The White-Silver House

I should mention that the cover is not all that is changing in Books 1 and 2. I have also changed the font I used for the print book, to the same one I used in Book 3. I was originally using Garamond, which is a very legible and very respected font for books. But italicized text is far more legible in Palatino Linotype, and I have a lot of italicized text. So I made that switch for The Hall of the Prophetess, and now that I am making revisions in The House in the Old Wood and Karia’s Path, I’ll make that change there as well.

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Not in February …

21 Feb

The Dwarf’s Legacy will not be released until mid-March.

I apologize for the delay from the intended February release. And I am sorry it took me so long to come to this decision, and to share this with you.

But I believe this is the correct decision.

At this point, I have received feedback from two of my five critical readers. This is even more of a problem than it might appear at first.

You can probably guess that I really want to hear from the other three before I move forward with publishing The Dwarf’s Legacy. You may not know that all of these critical readers are helping me out as a favor and have lives of their own. I appreciate their help, and while I’m asking about their progress, I’m not going to pressure them. It doesn’t help me as a writer or you as a reader if they rush.

But wait, there’s more.

I have told you before that I had to do a pretty serious rewrite of this fourth book – far more serious than any previous book in the series. So with the first three books, I was sending my critical readers books that I had written and then edited and revised. But The Dwarf’s Legacy was not edited as much by me.

You know what that means?

It means the two critical readers who have checked in so far have found a few issues that go beyond typos. So after I make revisions to address these issues, the book will have to be carefully checked again.

So my to-do list looks like this:

  • Politely prompt my critical readers for their response
  • Revise and edit the manuscript
  • Have two or three of them go through The Dwarf’s Legacy again.
  • Do the final edit, then the final proofreading
  • Format the text for paperback and Kindle

I am going to set a tentative publication date of March 14, in part at least because I will be at an event that weekend. I will keep you updated.

Again, please permit me to apologize for the delay.

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