I’ve been deep in revisions this month, making edits to Thorns 2 based on beta reader feedback.  I added more conflict to hopefully make things more exciting in the earlier parts of the book, and made some tweaks and edits throughout.  I brought Chapter One into my writing group, and did a substantial rewrite of that chapter.  I think most writers will agree, Chapter One is the hardest!

I have one more scene I want to significantly rewrite, a fight with a dragon that I also brought into my writing group and received some helpful feedback on.  Once I handle that and a few smaller edits, Thorns 2 should be ready for its next round of beta reader review.  And I’ll see where we end up from there!  For the last several years at least, I always spend much more time revising than I do on the original drafting…

Once I get Thorns 2 sent off to be read again, I expect I’ll turn back to Thorns 3.  For, of course, more revising!  I want to add some scenes earlier on and do some reworking of the ending.  I’m thinking of bringing in a villain from earlier in the series who is currently absent in the third book but might be exciting to include.  So many decisions!

My writing has been bouncing around between different books of my Thorns series recently.  I spent some time going through Thorns 3, my NaNoWriMo project of 2022.  I did some edits and made some notes, and concluded that the biggest changes need to be near the ending, to increase the conflict a bit more.  I then moved onto Thorns 4 for a little while, went through much the same process and came to pretty much the same conclusion – there’s some character things I want to weave in earlier, but mostly I want to make some revisions to the ending.  Thorns 4 is the most separated from the main plot of any book in the series, and I want to make some revisions to make more connections and make the ending more dramatic.

Earlier this month I moved my focus back to Thorns 2, after receiving beta reader feedback.  I’ve gone through those notes now, and am working on making some edits.  The ending is actually already exciting in this one, but I need to ramp up some tension in the earlier parts of the book.

It’s one of the rules in my writing group, that you can almost always add more tension to your story…

So on the whole, things are moving along pretty well!  A lot of things in process, but all of them going forward, and that feels good to see happen.

Just a brief update this month! My biggest recent writing news, of course, was the launch of my newest novel, The Princess Behind Thorns, on April 4th.  Still very exciting to have that out in the world!

The second book in the series is currently with beta-readers, so I’ve been turning to Book 3, which I drafted in November, 2022, for NaNoWriMo.  It’s nice to work on a book that was drafted relatively recently, compared to the first two in the series.  It’s also a departure from the previous two in shifting perspective to two supporting characters, Elena and Henry.  I’ve done an initial read-through and plan to go back now for some more extensive changes.  The novel is essentially a heist story, and I need to introduce a few more co-conspirators and work out a few more details of the heist!

That will likely be my focus for at least the next month or so, and then I’ll either get back to Thorns 2 – or maybe look ahead to Thorns 4 briefly?  We’ll see!  Lots of books in play right now!

I’ve had lots of writing progress since my last update, so that’s exciting to be sharing.  As you hopefully saw, The Princess Behind Thorns (Thorns 1) will be published in just over a week!  The book will be out on April 4th; the Kindle is already available for pre-order, and it will be available in paperback and hardback too.

I also finished my current round of revisions for Thorns 2, and sent that off to beta-readers last week.  I wrote the first draft in November of 2019, so it’s really great to hit this point finally.  The draft will be with beta-readers for a couple months, and I plan on more revision in the summer.  So hopefully it won’t be too many months before I can share this one with everyone too!

For now, I’m doing some revision on my collaborative novel, Pesto, Pirouettes and Potions…which has also been in process for a few years (there’s a theme here, and it’s very much pandemic-related!)  That’s a relatively brief project for now, and then I’ll be on to revisions of Thorns 3!  This one was drafted just last November, so it’s a comparatively recent project.  It’s exciting to be onto something new, so I’m looking forward to diving back into that.

I expect to be in this series for a while…but it feels good to be moving on to later parts of the story!

Writing work is rolling along on both of my current projects – I’m down to the last few edits for Thorns 1, and may be finally finished by the end of the long President’s Day weekend.  Here’s hoping!  And then I should have another post soon about when you can expect to read it.

Revisions on Thorns 2 slowed down, partially because I pivoted back to Thorns 1 and partially because my day job sent me to our Annual Conference for a week.  It was a good opportunity to do the relatively easy work of typing in edits to Thorns 1, but the conference and catching up afterwards halted Thorns 2 for about ten days.  I’m trying to get back to it now though, and I’m about 2/3 through the draft.  I was aiming to finish by the end of the month – I probably won’t manage that, but I don’t think I’ll miss it by much. Continue reading “Writing Update (February, 2023)” →