Tagged: Novel 002

Novel 002 Finished! Draft 5 is, anyway

You may be thinking to yourself: SHROUD OF DAWN is called “Novel 002” because THE RAVEN was the first book, right? Wrong! THE RAVEN is actually called “Novel 003”. I don’t need to explain myself to you. (I will, though: Novel 001 was a bit ambitious for me, so I shelved it. I’ll circle back to it later. Maybe.) Anyway, Novel 002, SHROUD OF DAWN, is as complete as I can get it at the moment! I have been querying agents since finishing Draft 4, but Draft 5 is the one I’m actually sending out when they request fulls. It...

The Raven won a silver IBPA Ben Franklin award!

THE RAVEN was a finalist for the Fiction: Horror category, and won a silver! Which really just means it didn’t win the gold but I don’t care, this is cool as hell! Congrats to fellow silver winner GIRL AMONG CROWS by Brendon Vayo, and especially to the winner of the category, THE WOODKIN by Alexander James! In other, equally as important news: I’ve gotten Shroud of Dawn to a point where it’s essentially as polished as I can get it without just tinkering forever! Now it’s time for me to search for an agent, then, ultimately, do more editing. 😅...

Still Almost Done

It turns out that not having a lot of experience writing endings makes endings difficult to write. Interesting…  I’ve been stuck at the end of Shroud of Dawn for a little while now; I know what I need to solve, but not how to solve it–and it’s difficult to ask for help from anyone other than a rubber duck. I’m 100k words into this novel (yes, I should shorten it) and every one of those words needs to tie into the end. (Not ‘need’, exactly–you know what I mean.) I just need to do it! Meanwhile, several story ideas, some...

The Race to Be Imperfect

Working on Novel 02, I’m finding out that it’s criminally difficult to both put out a work that you’re proud of and to put it out in a timely manner. Some wise man once said that if 100% is perfection, then we should all strive for 80%; and they’re right, of course. But why not make it BETTER if it can be better? At the very least, I want the themes to be cohesive, and the lessons, as a bare minimum, not harmful. It turns out that that’s quite the line to walk for Novel 02, which is about a...

On Editing

Hey folks! Diving back into my scifi-western after taking some time away from it and it is a BREATH of fresh air!! It’s when you’re in the weeds of a draft that imposter syndrome really kicks in–and it’s here, returning home from vacation, that you realize how much you do love your home, and the people and things and memories that you’ve decorated it with. Anyway, here’s hoping that I finish this draft sooner than later. Cheers everyone! (I’m not British)