Internets, I am pleased to report that finally, finally, I have turned in a draft of Vengeance of the Hunter, book 2 of the Rebels of Adalonia trilogy, to my editor at Carina Press.
I have come away with a few lessons from this. The first of these is that writing to a known deadline has proven harder than I anticipated–not only getting the book done, but planning it in such a way as to produce a still fairly coherent draft. When I sent the book that became Valor of the Healer to Carina, I’d had time to polish the hell out of that. It was draft six.
This time, not so much. I was working pretty much right off the draft of the synopsis I’d sent in to my aforementioned editor, so I had a pretty decent overall idea of where the story was going to go–but holding to it, and keeping the words going, was a challenge.
And um, yeah, I sorta kinda blew my deadline. Not horrendously, but close enough that I’m now going to be hard pressed to plow through the developmental and copy edits when my editor hands them back to me so we can stay on schedule. Lesson learned: start Victory of the Hawk sooner.
Also, have I levelled up again in Writer by stumbling across a deadline, or what? I’m not the first writer to do so and I’m sure I won’t be the last, but um, yeah, my chagrinned face. Let me show you it. *^_^*;;
ALSO: surprising me deeply, this has proven to be the shortest manuscript I’ve ever completed, clocking in at around 76,500 words. Given that Valor of the Healer came in in its final form at 118K, you can imagine that I’m baffled by this TOO. This was me trying to apply my editor’s lessons from the work done on Valor to cut down hard on my natural tendency to verbosity, but I’m thinking at this point that I probably hugely overcompensated. I’ll have to find out when the requested edits come back.
Now, my style has tightened up somewhat since I originally wrote Faerie Blood, as well as the earlier drafts of Valor. Bone Walker came in pretty compact as well. And, Vengeance has a lot less of me setting up the characters since as of this book, I have introduced most of the major characters already–and I’m upping the stakes of what’s going on and expanding the scope of the action as well. So a lot of this book is plot-driven rather than character-driven.
But I’m introducing notable new characters as well and I’m not sure I’ve developed them enough yet. I’ve flagged this as a place where I need guidance, and am now on standby for my editor’s requested changes.
Internets, my brain, it is GOO. But Vengeance of the Hunter in its initial incarnation is DONE DONE DONE. More bulletins as the book begins to progress towards its shipping form. And meanwhile: stand by for further updates on the coming of Bone Walker!
