Well, I haven’t posted for nearly a month, but it has been a somewhat busy month. I’ve engaged a dev editor for The Tame Ones, and I’ve continued to work on the second novel of The Witches’ War. I also have renamed the second novel. Have I mentioned that? I can’t remember when I did that. It seems like it was just a few weeks ago, so it would’ve been after my last post.
The new title? The Crystalline Shadow. The title The Wild Ones wasn’t working for me anymore. It was literally distracting, and when I realized that it was messing around with my mindset—because I kept thinking this book was about the Wild Ones, which it turns out that it ISN’T!—I knew the title needed to change, stat! I changed it first to The Shadow Crystal, but that didn’t work for me because the title of the third book is The Witch Crystal. Too similar. Then I considered The Crystal Shadow. Then The Crystal Shadows. Then I hit on The Crystalline Shadow. And THAT fit. It felt right.
In other news, I’m hoping my dev editor is nearly done. She said this Friday, so crossing fingers, cause I wanna see what she’s come up with. I’ve had some good words from her about The Tame Ones, so I’m excited. And as of yesterday, I’ve checked on my progress for The Crystalline Shadow, and I’m around two-thirds done.
On a thoughtful note, I’ve discovered that one of my favorite authors doesn’t write drafts. She writes the story, adjusts for errors such as grammar, etc., and then ships it to the editor. Huh. I’ve recently begun doing the same thing, and I wondered if I was doing it wrong. Because I used to have multiple drafts of the same story. The first novel of my phoenix stories has seen uncounted versions. And I’ve already decided that once The Witches’ War is done, I’ll tackle that series once again by rewriting the first book once again, but in my new (read, older and more mature) voice, with no cut and paste. I’ve already done this with The Tame Ones. Just the single draft. No rewrites. No revisions. Just edits. I’m not sure what this means. But I like it!
Well, off to work on The Crystalline Shadow some more!