Monthly Archives: April 2018

So much to do!

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Occasionally I get into conversations with other writes – those in professional writing, as well as in fandom (because yes, I am still involved not just in professional writing, but in fandom writing as well), and the conversation usually involves things like, “So what are you writing?”

Boy, that’s a loaded question.  It’s like asking a hypochondriac how they are feeling.

I’m still hip-deep in the middle of my Migration: Beginnings rewrite, though I’m chugging along quite well after a quite productive weekend.  I’m almost at 75% complete in the initial rewrite, which is just taking the book from present tense to past tense.  But after that is complete, I’ll be doing a little more tweaking – making Rhys a little more angsty, as well as applying certain things from “Take Off Your Pants” like end of chapter tweaks.

And I’ve got to finish it sometime soon because once that’s done and off my plate, it will still be full!  This is just a sample:

  • Prequel book to Migration: Beginnings, to offer free for folks new to the series
  • The second and third books in the Migration: Beginnings series
  • Four short stories, each 5,000 to 25,000 words, for a book I’m co-writing with my “Million Miles Amok” co-writer Lisa Witte.
  • Prequel and the first book in a male/male erotica series

Hundreds of thousands of words are planned in dozens of stories, just waiting to be written!

Why I chose to unpublish Migration Beginnings

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One of the most difficult things you have to do as a writer is the editing process.  I have a wonderful little magnet that says:

Write Drunk – Edit Sober

And that’s a good philosophy, even if you don’t take it literally.  Write as uninhibited as you can, but when you go through the editing process, a careful, analytical hand is called for.

Migration: Beginnings has been published for just over a year now to minor success – and that’s okay.  It’s my baby, and I’m happy with it, for the most part.  But what I wasn’t happy with stemmed from feedback received after the book was published, as well as information I found out just about the same time.  First, the overall feedback from a couple of readers was that the book would flow better if it were in past tense instead of present tense.  Now for me, tense doesn’t make that huge a difference.  I can read either.  But I consider that personally, I don’t like to read things written in first-person.  Very few writers can get me to read first-person written works.  So thinking about it from their perspective, it just made sense that I should rewrite it as a past-tense written book.

Beyond that, I read Libbie Hawker’s “Take Off Your Pants” – and realized all of the stuff that I left out of the book.  The good thing is, not only can I see the holes that I need to fill, but I can also see how to fill them.

But the problem isn’t the rewrite – it’s the time it’s taking me.  Real life gets in the way a lot, leaving me precious little time to work on my writing.  I’m carving out time to get it done, but sometimes it gets missed because life happens.

So I unpublished Migration: Beginnings from Amazon.  It’s still published in a couple other spots, but because the volume of sales is so low, I’m not worried about it.  I’m giving myself until May 31st to finish the rewrite, and then I’ll get it published again.  And if you’ve purchased a copy, it will get updated to the new version.

Here’s to meeting deadlines and productivity!  Once Migration is completed, I can start on what the Muse strikes me with on any of the half a dozen other books that are running through my head.