Edit, Edit, Edit! All in the name of "Good"!

I hope, I do not complain too much about the editing process as such. It is simply a brutally boring work but it needs to be done. Received back the edited version of my newest Young Adult novel. Grammar and spelling I already approved mostly unseen. Writing in a non-native language gives you almost no argument NOT to accept these type of errors. That took ten minutes. 

What takes ten days is the content edit: Rephrasing, rewriting, logical error. See below one of the many examples. 

Typical edit for rephrasing

What brings me through this phase is good music in the background. Yesterday it was a rediscovered Gerry Rafferty's City to City. Tonight William Fitzsimmons's Derivates enriched by Halloween, Alaska. Enough, I shouldn't write blogs, I should edit my manuscript!

And off it goes — another book is in the can!

The last mile before the editor took a while, but last weekend I did the boring final-final checklist of double-spaces, missing questionmarks, and overused words like "but" or "so". Man, I hate that part. But it is done! Codename project "TMH" is off to the editor, final pre-edit landing is almost exactly 50.000 words, just as intended for the first of this Young Adult series book. 

Second Chapter excerpt — Sally in trouble, not a first... 

No peace for the wicked, I started right away on a novella format of the same series, sort of mini-sequel that I'll plan to use for promotional activities with Wattpad and other platforms. As it is a sequel used for pre-publishing work, it will be hard not to give too much away of the main book. 

Broke into the Top 1000 again with "Five for Forever"

Very nice. The April promotion works! Five for Forever crawls up again and hit the rank 1000 line today in the Romance category. The other categories go into the same direction. Nice!

Five for Forever in Amazon's Kindle Deal Spring Promotion

Throughout April my Kindle Scout awarded book "Five for Forever" will be on promotion in all markets for around 4.00 USD. Spread the news.

Buy directly on the book page on Amazon.

From the Writer's Desk - March Update

Long time no hear. Working on various things at once, but most importantly, I switched projects in mid-stride. In my last post I tracked the progress for the next romantic comedy. A month ago I decided to put the writing on hold and concentrate on a new project. A bit of a longer explainer might come later, but I am almost done with what I set out to do. 

The new project came as sort of a Sunday night inspiration, writing a young adult novel based on "a formula". It took me about two days to work on the formula and then I simply started writing. I am now at 35K words of a 50K words target and hope to be done by end of April. That is the great thing about being an independent unsuccessful author — you can turn your ship on the top of a pin at moment's notice, as you are only responsible to you. The story based on the formula came out almost exactly as I envisioned it to be. A little too short after the first A-Z run, working on bolstering it up now. Thinking about illustration, too, but not sure how that will work, timing wise.

Going into Young Adult novels has another consequence: I'll need to restructure my website. Right now, I just have the content split in three sections: the blog you are reading now, English novels, German novels. This might not work as I'd like to keep kids and grown ups separated. Option would be to create another pen name and keep both identities apart. Or structure the site according to genres: Mystery&Thriller, Romantic Comedy, Young Adult, and German Young Adult. Let's see how flexible Squarespace is.

Another update from the back catalogue: Five for Forever is oscillating in the Amazon book charts. Don't worry, nothing spectacular. But this weekend it made it up to the 2000 of Romance and Woman Contemporary charts again after a while in the 10000-range. There seem to be buyers, after all. Hope they enjoy and recommend it.

The long march...

Writing is a lonely profession, especially when you are stuck at 47.000 words. My latest project, another romantic comedy, let's call it project RomCom2, so I don't need to give away anything, is coming along. I wrote the base storyline which centers around three girlfriends who start-up an online company, and I wrote some of the romantic entanglements. Did the word count on Sunday for the first time, just to get a lay of the land. Shocked: 47.000 words. As comparison: my previous romantic comedy "Five for Forever" came out in its first version at around 110.000 which I painfully had to reduce to 100.000. A lot of dear scenes went out of the window. 

Excerpt "RomCom2" (Working Title)

With RomCom2, I am now halfway there. Only halfway. How much more romance can I pour in? How many scenes do I need to make this a full length novel. Admittedly, 100.000 words for "Five for forever" resulted in a thick book. So, I give myself a target: 80.000 words for RomCom2. Let's do some quick math: 80.000 words target minus 47.000 words status quo equals 33.000 words missing. 33 chapters at 1000 words each. 16 chapters at 2000 words each. 24 chapters at 1500 words. Well, you get the drift. 

Let's break it down structurally on the basis of 24 chapters. I have three major characters with romantic developments and entanglements. So June, Carlotta, and Gracie receive eight chapters each. This gives me a lot of development room, as most of them already have their first and last acts already drafted. So eight chapters for each of the protagonists second, third and fourth act. Hope the quantity in relationship melee does not affect quality.

Let's do it. The long march...

8. February: 47.000 words down, 33.000 words out there...