It was another week of editing for me, working hard to get Forbidden Blood down from 121,594 words to a more reasonable 110,000. I’m not really one for editing and I tend to find it quite boring. Last week I did well, and was enthusiastic about it. This week started out very slow and I just could not be bothered with it on Monday, but I pushed myself and soon picked up where I left off last week, doing a good hard edit and draft. This week has been pretty stressful at work too, with a big project weighing me down and a lot of frustration, which didn’t help at all. It totally drained me and I just wanted to sleep.
I have decided that once I have this story done in second draft, and Her Dark Angel done in second draft too, that I’m going to give myself some much needed down time for a week or so. I’ll probably catch up with my Japanese learning, which has been suffering since November, and maybe do some reading.
Progress was good in the end this week. I’ve edited 215 pages now and have 45 to go. The current word count is now around 111,000 words, and I think I should be able to cut it down to around 108,500 and then improve a few scenes which will bring it back to 110,000.
I think that I’ll probably end up sending Forbidden Blood out to agents since I haven’t had any takers for Love Immortal (I think the length is hindering it since it’s 158000 words), and will use Love Immortal as a nice little enticement. Surely having two books complete is better than one?
I need to get the second draft done on Ascension because that’s not a vampire paranormal so probably stands more chance of being picked up right now and the length is around what every publisher and agent seems to be asking for these days (lord knows why though when I think 80-90,000 is very short for a decent novel). Ascension is currently only around 73,000 words, but it does need a bit of work. I originally wrote it as a 15,000 word short but it said it wanted to be a novel, so I asked some readers to take a look and they agreed, so I made it into a novel. By the time I’m done with it, it’ll probably be around 85,000 I reckon. I keep putting it off because I know it’s going to be hard work!
I’ve also been thinking up other stories to add into the pipeline. I really need to get writing my Hades’ Boys series though, even though I’m not sure what the market is for them right now. I don’t really care either. I’ve never written to market. I write what the muse tells me and he’s telling me a lot right now… mostly vampire romance novels and some werewolf romance novels… but there are demons, gods and witches in the wings too.
