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Valor of the Healer

Lament of the Dove is AWAY!

I am thrilled and nervous as all hell to report, O Internets, that the sixth (and hopefully final, at least for a while) draft of Lament of the Dove has now been sent off to Carina Press!

The word count as of the completion of this draft stands at roughly 112,300. I actually yanked about 13K when I did the word count reduction pass in Draft Five, but about 7K came back with the new content that went into Draft Six. So the net word count reduction came in at about 6,100–at the very bottom edge of the range that Carina’s editor requested! Whew!

Between the change requests I got from their editor and the excellent feedback from this last round of beta reading, Lament is now a much, much stronger book. And even if Carina says no, I’ll be happy to send this book out to consideration elsewhere. For now, the plan is to let Lament sit with Carina until I hear back from them, and turn attention over to finishing up Bone Walker and getting its Kickstarter going!

Today is a good day indeed.

February 26, 2012 by
Valor of the Healer

Calling all beta readers!

I am delighted–and relieved, OH MY GOD relieved–to announce that as of this posting, Draft Six of Lament of the Dove is finally, FINALLY complete.

Final word count on this draft is roughly 110K, which puts me within the range I was asked for in Carina’s R&R. Quite a bit of old content has been taken out. Quite a bit of new content has been put in. And now I am going to step away from this book for a few weeks, before I come back for one last read-through to make sure nothing else is in desperate need of fixing before I re-query it back to Carina Press.

This, O Internets, is where you come in. Several of you out there have expressed previous interest in beta reading for me. If you’re still interested, and you think you’ll be able to read through Lament for me in the next couple of weeks, I need to hear from you ASAP.

What I need is going to be extremely simple. I do not at this point need in-depth proofreading or copyedits, although as always, any obvious errors should be brought to my attention. Mostly I need people to read through it like any other book, sanity-check it, and tell me if it hangs together cohesively. If you’ve read previous drafts of Lament and you’re up for taking another stab at it, you’re more than welcome. If you haven’t read a previous draft and you want to, that’s also awesome.

Either way, contact me if you want in. I will fling you a copy of the manuscript in the file format of your choice. My usual gmail addresses are acceptable contact methods, as are DMs on Twitter or PMs on Facebook. Hell, if you can reach me with smoke signals or carrier pigeons, go for it! Just talk to me!

And talk to me soon. I would like if at all possible to re-submit the book to Carina before I go to Canada at the beginning of March, to get it done and dealt with. Thanks all, as always, for your support!

January 30, 2012 by
Faerie Blood, Valor of the Healer

Faerie Blood and Lament of the Dove status report

As of this writing, Faerie Blood has finally vanished off of Fictionwise–and by extension, ereader.com, since Fictionwise owns that site and to the best of my knowledge, they use the same database. This means now that the novel shouldn’t be available for sale anywhere at all.

It’s a bit weird, being back to square one with this book, even if at a smaller scale than several traditionally published authors I know who’ve had a series fold out from underneath them. At the same time, though, it’s also a bit of a relief.

Faerie Blood is now in the queue at Carina Press, for all the same general reasons I was interested in them before: i.e., they’re queer-friendly, they’re digital and therefore appealing to me as a tech geek, they’re taking all genres and do a lot of ‘other genres with heavy romantic elements’ stuff in particular, they now have a solid and established track record. In this specific case, though, I’ve also noted that they’ve published at least a couple of authors who’d been previously published elsewhere–at least one author for example who was previously published through Dorchester. So I’m hoping that this’ll mean they’ll be receptive to my work.

Relatedly, I am one, count it, one single chapter away from finishing the sixth draft of Lament of the Dove. Once that happens, I will be putting out a call for beta readers. (I’m cognizant that we’re moving into the Christmas/Solstice season, though, so I will be trying to schedule around that, and targeting sending Lament off in early January.) Watch this space for further details on that, people!

December 6, 2011 by
Valor of the Healer

Hiatus report

Here I am on Saturday, so I thought I’d go ahead and tell y’all about what progress I’ve made on Lament of the Dove. Short form–not as much as I would have liked. Chances are high I’m not going to be finished by tomorrow.

But, and this is the important thing: I’m really happy with what I’ve achieved. I made it into Chapter 20, only to discover that I had to rewrite pretty much 2/3rds of the entire chapter in order to accomplish one of the last remaining changes on the Carina editor’s request list: i.e., giving Faanshi a better path of development, and demonstrating to the reader that she begins to progress in getting a handle on her power.

For the last few days I’ve therefore been inching my way through rewriting Chapter 20. I’ve made substantial progress on it, and I think the result’s going to be a much more dynamic chapter overall. It’s not only aiming for the Faanshi goal I mentioned, but also to raise the stakes on her link with Kestar, as I’m trying to demonstrate that yes, it is an active danger to both of them.

This means I’m likely going to have to rewrite some of Chapter 21 as well, since that’s the next Kestar chapter, and he’ll have to react to some of this new stuff I’m writing in Chapter 20. We’ll see how far I get by tomorrow night, and if I can keep up the momentum over the next couple of weeks. I still want to get Lament squared away soon, ideally with enough time to let beta readers look over this hopefully final draft before userinfosolarbird and I take off for VCON at the end of the month.

Wish me luck, all!

September 10, 2011 by
Valor of the Healer

One last thing before I rig for silent running

I will need beta readers for this hopefully last draft before I fling it back to Carina. The plan will be to finish the six chapters left that I need to do, let it simmer for a couple of weeks (and be beta read, ideally), then make one more read-through myself before I send it off.

Which means, assuming that I finish the edits in the next few days, I’m going to need people who think they can commit to reading the manuscript some time in the next two weeks.

If you’ve already read Lament before and are up for taking another crack at it, what I would need from you is to sanity check the changes I’ve made in response to the letter I had from Carina, and make sure the story still holds together.

If you haven’t read Lament before, pretty much the same–just read through the book like you would any other book, and tell me if you think it holds together well.

I would not, repeat, NOT require an in-depth proofread. I’ve already edited the hell out of this text, mostly to whittle down my propensity for verbosity, and I’m to the point of not wanting to whittle it any further because just about every word left in here is a word I very specifically want there. However, any glaringly obvious typos, missing words, or words I clearly should have used in place of words that are actually there should definitely be pointed out.

Most of all though I would need a commitment to step up and do this in the rough two weeks or so after I finish the edit pass. I really want to get this done and dealt with, and once the edits are finished, I don’t want to let the manuscript sit too long before I send it back to Carina. I’ve screwed around long enough. I want this done.

So! Four of you have already expressed interest (many thanks to userinfotechnoshaman, userinfogerimaple, Heidi, and Annie), but if anybody else out there wants in, let me know. The best way to do that will be to fling me an email (my gmail address of annathepiper will be fine) and let me know what email address I can reach you at, for purposes of sending you a manuscript.

And watch this space for when I announce being done.

Off to edit, people! Kestar, Julian, Faanshi? Let’s do this thing.

September 2, 2011 by