Thirsty Thursday #11

Thirsty Thursday is my own recurring meme whereupon I lift a glass (metaphorically speaking) to celebrate the triumphs I have experienced in the last seven days. They can be big, they can be small, but there has to be something because I believe life is all about looking at the positive. It's simply too short and too unpredictable to focus on the negative. So with that in mind, here is why I'm raising a glass today:

1. This isn't necessarily news to those who subscribe to my Facebook feed, but I finished off the rough draft of Bitter Nights last week and am into the Read-through edit phase of the process. Here's how it should work from here, but don't hold me to this because the process is organic:
- Read-through edit is merely trying to see early on what parts of the story need shoring up. However, since I'm close to the material, I obviously need help which means...
- ... it'll go to a few Beta Readers once I have the edits in. I'm going to try and be respectful of the schedules of my readers but theoretically they would get right to it, make their comments and I would be back into the comprehensive edit/revision by the middle of August.
- Comprehensive edit/Revision is just that. I start from the back of the book and work my way forward and try to objectively look at each paragraph and see how to make it better mechanically. Along the way I look at ways to take the reader suggestions and incorporate them to hopefully make the overall story better.
- Once that's done, it's off to a couple of select readers who have final opinion on the product. Assuming it doesn't require any more major revisions, I will run the manuscript through Serenity editor to point out where I need to fix things mechanically.
- Somewhere in that process I'll finalize the title and get a cover commissioned.
- Once all these things are done, then it'll be ready for release. However, in order to make sure there's some "buzz" to go along with the release, I will get advanced review copies out to about five blogs that will be set to post a review on "release day".
- No timeline for any of this. Again, it's an organic process.

2. My daughter turned four today. FOUR!! Where the heck did the time go?

3. Quick shout out to my old childhood friend Devon for the birth of her baby boy, and to an old friend of my wife, Diane, for the birth of her baby girl. It's a baby-fest! That's the third person in about a month who has had a kid, and the fifth in the past year. Love babies. Don't necessarily want another one myself, but I'm happy for others.

I think that's it for this version of Thirsty Thursday. I know it's not much but lately I've been pretty busy and haven't been keeping track of a lot of the little things that I used to. Ya'll stay happy!

I have a blog?

I am not a prolific blogger. It's important to note that this is merely an extension of my life as a whole. I only have enough energy to go around, and as the day wears on, depending on how everything went on said day, my capability to form more than single word thoughts starts to deteriorate. Which is why you'll see gaps in this blog and in my twitter and in my Facebook page that encompass days or even weeks. It's usually when I'm too busy to get around to it, or at least busy enough that it's not the first thing I think of when I have a free moment. Family, School, and Work come first. Writing is a distant fourth. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before but it bears repeating. Some days I can rearrange the order, except for Family because my wife and kids always come first, but at the end of the week, that's generally how it's all laid out.

Bitter Nights (working title) is currently in the first Read-through Edit phase. In this phase, I attack the manuscript as a reader and do my best to focus on the story and any glaring editing issues that need to be stamped out before moving on to the next phase: Beta Readers. I'm working on my ability to show versus tell, the overall pacing, keeping the exposition down to necessity, and doing my best to keep out major repetition of ideas or events. The more I write, the better I get at spotting these issues, which will ultimately end up making for a stronger read.

A lot happens in this book, both on a personal level and on a wider scale. My hope is that I've properly conveyed the issues Cheryl is facing and that her decisions at least make sense. They do to me, but then I'm biased. There's also an expansion of the lore of the Eternal War and you will learn a lot about Father Harold. He steps up to the role Rev occupied in Spiral X, as a side-kick to Cheryl, but at the same time it's a different dynamic than what those two experienced. All the usual characters are there along with a few more. Some you will like, some you won't. I'm looking forward to showing you all here in the next few months. No firm release date, not yet, but I'm going to do my best to make sure the wait isn't very long.

I guess that's it for now. I'll do what I can to make sure the time between blog posts isn't more than a week though. We'll see.

Have a nice day!