Well, I finished the polish phase of Hunter’s Moon, the next Vampires Realm novel, at the weekend and sent it off to a few kind readers who offered to run their eyes over it and offer me feedback. I have a few questions about it and just want to make sure that it’s perfect before unleashing it on the world.
This week I’ve been doing two things: Reading and getting sick.
I started the week with the intention of doing a read through of Ascension and then starting the polish edit on it. Unfortunately, it’s just not sitting well with me. I feel there are quite a few things that need addressing and the writing needs a good buffing up session throughout the book. The trouble with Ascension is, I started it as a short story intended for the Nocturne Bites line by Harlequin. They rejected two of my stories, and I felt this one really had a novel feel about it, and I wanted to extend it. I gave it out to around 30 readers, who mostly came back with the same feeling–it should be a novel not a short story. I never sent it to Harlequin, and instead extended it. I think in the extension process, I flipped back from trying to write for Harly to writing like my normal self. This means that the two styles don’t quite mesh. So, Ascension needs another draft before it can be polished.
Which is why I’m now reading Forbidden Blood.
Forbidden Blood is a vampire romance with a twist. Not quite traditional, but nothing I write ever really is. It also has a nicely tortured hero. I have a thing for writing those too. I’m banking on it being in better shape than Ascension, as I wrote it more recently, and therefore it will only need a polish as opposed to another draft. I’ve already done a second draft of the novel, and afterward I thought of a few things I could do to improve it. I have to add those into the story, but I don’t think it will be difficult to work them in. I’ve only read around 20 pages of it so far. It reads well, with the odd thing I want to smooth out or improve.
Of course, I’m also touting a beautifully ugly cold right now, so chances are nothing I read is going to feel amazing because I’m so under the weather and just feeling vaguely cruel towards my stories because of it. I want to be able to sit down and just spend the whole day working on the stories and getting them into top shape, but that’ll take weeks and I want to get the story out at the end of March.
At this rate, I’ll be moving another release date. I’ll have to do it if I don’t feel I have enough time. There’s only 3 weeks until my ear operation now, which probably isn’t enough time to do another copy edit on a book and then have time to proof it. We’ll see! I do love a challenge.
