annathepiper | Entries tagged with lament of the dove: sixth draft

I am thrilled and nervous as all hell to report, O Internets, that the sixth (and hopefully final, at least for a while) draft of Lament of the Dove has now been sent off to Carina Press!

The word count as of the completion of this draft stands at roughly 112,300. I actually yanked about 13K when I did the word count reduction pass in Draft Five, but about 7K came back with the new content that went into Draft Six. So the net word count reduction came in at about 6,100–at the very bottom edge of the range that Carina’s editor requested! Whew!

Between the change requests I got from their editor and the excellent feedback from this last round of beta reading, Lament is now a much, much stronger book. And even if Carina says no, I’ll be happy to send this book out to consideration elsewhere. For now, the plan is to let Lament sit with Carina until I hear back from them, and turn attention over to finishing up Bone Walker and getting its Kickstarter going!

Today is a good day indeed.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

I am delighted–and relieved, OH MY GOD relieved–to announce that as of this posting, Draft Six of Lament of the Dove is finally, FINALLY complete.

Final word count on this draft is roughly 110K, which puts me within the range I was asked for in Carina’s R&R. Quite a bit of old content has been taken out. Quite a bit of new content has been put in. And now I am going to step away from this book for a few weeks, before I come back for one last read-through to make sure nothing else is in desperate need of fixing before I re-query it back to Carina Press.

This, O Internets, is where you come in. Several of you out there have expressed previous interest in beta reading for me. If you’re still interested, and you think you’ll be able to read through Lament for me in the next couple of weeks, I need to hear from you ASAP.

What I need is going to be extremely simple. I do not at this point need in-depth proofreading or copyedits, although as always, any obvious errors should be brought to my attention. Mostly I need people to read through it like any other book, sanity-check it, and tell me if it hangs together cohesively. If you’ve read previous drafts of Lament and you’re up for taking another stab at it, you’re more than welcome. If you haven’t read a previous draft and you want to, that’s also awesome.

Either way, contact me if you want in. I will fling you a copy of the manuscript in the file format of your choice. My usual gmail addresses are acceptable contact methods, as are DMs on Twitter or PMs on Facebook. Hell, if you can reach me with smoke signals or carrier pigeons, go for it! Just talk to me!

And talk to me soon. I would like if at all possible to re-submit the book to Carina before I go to Canada at the beginning of March, to get it done and dealt with. Thanks all, as always, for your support!

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

As of this writing, Faerie Blood has finally vanished off of Fictionwise–and by extension, ereader.com, since Fictionwise owns that site and to the best of my knowledge, they use the same database. This means now that the novel shouldn’t be available for sale anywhere at all.

It’s a bit weird, being back to square one with this book, even if at a smaller scale than several traditionally published authors I know who’ve had a series fold out from underneath them. At the same time, though, it’s also a bit of a relief.

Faerie Blood is now in the queue at Carina Press, for all the same general reasons I was interested in them before: i.e., they’re queer-friendly, they’re digital and therefore appealing to me as a tech geek, they’re taking all genres and do a lot of ‘other genres with heavy romantic elements’ stuff in particular, they now have a solid and established track record. In this specific case, though, I’ve also noted that they’ve published at least a couple of authors who’d been previously published elsewhere–at least one author for example who was previously published through Dorchester. So I’m hoping that this’ll mean they’ll be receptive to my work.

Relatedly, I am one, count it, one single chapter away from finishing the sixth draft of Lament of the Dove. Once that happens, I will be putting out a call for beta readers. (I’m cognizant that we’re moving into the Christmas/Solstice season, though, so I will be trying to schedule around that, and targeting sending Lament off in early January.) Watch this space for further details on that, people!

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

Here I am on Saturday, so I thought I’d go ahead and tell y’all about what progress I’ve made on Lament of the Dove. Short form–not as much as I would have liked. Chances are high I’m not going to be finished by tomorrow.

But, and this is the important thing: I’m really happy with what I’ve achieved. I made it into Chapter 20, only to discover that I had to rewrite pretty much 2/3rds of the entire chapter in order to accomplish one of the last remaining changes on the Carina editor’s request list: i.e., giving Faanshi a better path of development, and demonstrating to the reader that she begins to progress in getting a handle on her power.

For the last few days I’ve therefore been inching my way through rewriting Chapter 20. I’ve made substantial progress on it, and I think the result’s going to be a much more dynamic chapter overall. It’s not only aiming for the Faanshi goal I mentioned, but also to raise the stakes on her link with Kestar, as I’m trying to demonstrate that yes, it is an active danger to both of them.

This means I’m likely going to have to rewrite some of Chapter 21 as well, since that’s the next Kestar chapter, and he’ll have to react to some of this new stuff I’m writing in Chapter 20. We’ll see how far I get by tomorrow night, and if I can keep up the momentum over the next couple of weeks. I still want to get Lament squared away soon, ideally with enough time to let beta readers look over this hopefully final draft before solarbird and I take off for VCON at the end of the month.

Wish me luck, all!

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

I will need beta readers for this hopefully last draft before I fling it back to Carina. The plan will be to finish the six chapters left that I need to do, let it simmer for a couple of weeks (and be beta read, ideally), then make one more read-through myself before I send it off.

Which means, assuming that I finish the edits in the next few days, I’m going to need people who think they can commit to reading the manuscript some time in the next two weeks.

If you’ve already read Lament before and are up for taking another crack at it, what I would need from you is to sanity check the changes I’ve made in response to the letter I had from Carina, and make sure the story still holds together.

If you haven’t read Lament before, pretty much the same–just read through the book like you would any other book, and tell me if you think it holds together well.

I would not, repeat, NOT require an in-depth proofread. I’ve already edited the hell out of this text, mostly to whittle down my propensity for verbosity, and I’m to the point of not wanting to whittle it any further because just about every word left in here is a word I very specifically want there. However, any glaringly obvious typos, missing words, or words I clearly should have used in place of words that are actually there should definitely be pointed out.

Most of all though I would need a commitment to step up and do this in the rough two weeks or so after I finish the edit pass. I really want to get this done and dealt with, and once the edits are finished, I don’t want to let the manuscript sit too long before I send it back to Carina. I’ve screwed around long enough. I want this done.

So! Four of you have already expressed interest (many thanks to technoshaman, gerimaple, Heidi, and Annie), but if anybody else out there wants in, let me know. The best way to do that will be to fling me an email (my gmail address of annathepiper will be fine) and let me know what email address I can reach you at, for purposes of sending you a manuscript.

And watch this space for when I announce being done.

Off to edit, people! Kestar, Julian, Faanshi? Let’s do this thing.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

Tonight, hoping to get a head start on the Great Editpalooza next week, I did some poking at the rest of Chapter 18 of Lament of the Dove. I am pleased to report that I have actually finished the edits on that chapter, as of this post!

This means I have six, count ‘em, six chapters left to do and a nine-day vacation to do them in. I can do this thing. I WILL do this thing. And if I finish before the nine days are up, I’ll shift immediate gears into resuming throwing words at Bone Walker or whatever else will take them; the Internet hiatus will still be in effect.

So get your Anna in while supplies last, people! I will not be monitoring any of the social networks at all next week, and I cannot guarantee I’ll pay attention to journal or blog comments either. I will however keep an eye on regular email.

And for the curious, Lament is currently clocking in around 107K, which is about 3,500 words added back in as of this draft–most of which have come in with the entirely new scene I’ve written to replace the beginning of Chapter 18. This is still well within the range of word count limits Carina Press’s editor asked for. It’ll be interesting to see if any further substantial word count changes occur.

Wish me luck, folks.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

Which is to say, I’m going to take the entire week of Labor Day off since I have the vacation time to spare, and work on finishing my edits. To further this goal, I will be also dropping off the net for the duration of that week. I’ll still be answering email, but I won’t be monitoring Twitter, Facebook, or Google+, and for the most part I’ll only be answering email sent directly to me (as opposed to any of the mailing lists I’m on, or comments on any of my posts).

Noting this now by way of general accountability. I may post status updates during that week–again, for purposes of accountability–but I can’t guarantee I’ll answer any comments on them.

We’ll see how much I can get done before then; any little bit I can get done before does after all further the goal. And anything I can write above and beyond finishing the edits on Lament will be bonus. Christopher and Kendis are looking VERY expectant in the back of my brain, you know.

So there you have it. If you think you might want to get a hold of me during that week for whatever reason, email, text, or phone will be best! If you think you should have those means of contacting me and you don’t, let me know.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

My writing morale, for various reasons I won’t get into in a public post, has been pretty low for a while–another round of that self-defeating, self-perpetuating cycle that I daresay any writer who’s been at it for more than five minutes knows all too well. The only real cure for it is to just do the damn writing, and the simple fact that I’ve had an R&R to finish for a while has been enough to keep the morale from vanishing entirely.

So I dragged another 250 words out of my head tonight for Chapter 18 of Lament of the Dove. Even this tiny number of words has felt like an effort, but I don’t want to think of it like that; I’d rather think of it as a victory, tiny though it may be. And I’m going to write tomorrow, dammit, come hell or high water, gods willing and the creek don’t rise, etc. I can commit to writing tomorrow. Even if it’s twenty words. I will write tomorrow.

But now I have to go to bed.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

But now I have to go to bed.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

As of last night I finished the fairly minimal edits on Chapter 17. This brings me into Chapter 18, which is perhaps the last place I need to add a seriously large chunk of new content–I need to create a whole new scene to go here. So this chapter will take me a bit.

It does mean, though, that I’m now within seven chapters of finishing this long, long edit pass. Wish me… not luck, but rather, the discipline and focus I need to just get this done.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

I have joined my very first official writing group, consisting of myself, Alex Piper, Jemma Prophet, jennygriffee, and the redoubtable Vonda McIntyre. We are calling ourselves Imaginary Ink, and we just had our first official critique meeting last night, discussing Jemma’s and Jenny’s works in progress.

I’m feeling excited about this, since I really need a kick in the pants to get myself back on track. Lament of the Dove has GOT to be finished. And I need to get going on doing proper edits on Queen of Souls, so that I can start shopping that thing around.

So in fact, I shall be flinging QoS at the group for critique for our next meeting, and shall be working in the meantime to get Lament‘s edits done before then so that they can sanity check it for me before I fling it back to Carina. With that in mind, I shall be holing up for a good chunk of this forthcoming three-day weekend, doing battle with as many chapters as I can finish. I won’t be paying attention to Twitter or Facebook, but I will keep an eye on email. Anybody have a reason to ping me, just fling me a note!

And wish us all luck, folks. We’ve got some awesome works between us and we’re looking forward to sharing them with the world.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

My fellow Drollerie author Joely Sue Burkhart is running her Maynowrimo thing again this year–by which we mean, it’s a lot like Nanowrimo, only with a self-selected goal, in a much smaller group of authors trying to get some formal projects done.

I’m taking this as impetus to get edits on Lament of the Dove done, dammit. My goal: get the sixth and hopefully final draft finished by end of May. I’d really, REALLY like to get it back into Carina’s hands by mid-June, so consider this a preliminary call: anybody out there willing to beta read Draft Six? Beta reading previous drafts of Lament is not absolutely required, although anybody who has is more than welcome to jump in and tell me whether the changes I’m making generally overall improve things.

Note also to those of you who took a spin through the last draft: I’m not going line-by-line through changes, though I know some of you went above and beyond the call of duty and provided that level of detail in your feedback. I am however on the lookout for general commentary y’all made to me, such as watching out for overuse of semi-colons and such. Draft Six’s all about the bigger picture edits, and laying down a better ending to lead into Book Two.

FINALLY finished off Chapter 5 today–which was a hard one–and blew through all of Chapter 6. The next major changes are projected to fall in Chapter 12, so I’m hoping to charge through to that point in short order this week.

Here goes nothing. Wish me luck, folks.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

I have just finished my word count reduction review of Chapter 24, the final chapter of Lament of the Dove. Y’all may recall that I’d already yoinked out a huge number of words from this chapter taking out Nine-Fingered Rab’s final scene, now targeted for the beginning of Shadow of the Rook. I did however want to make one last pass through it just to see if there were any other words I could lose.

Now that that is done, I can commence Draft Six. This will be the pass through which I will implement the bigger requested changes from both Carina’s editor and the beta readers who’ve given me the best feedback. I’m not going to go into detail on the planned changes here for purposes of avoiding spoiling anybody.

Suffice to say, instead, that Draft Five’s final word count clocks in at 104,504 words, some of which will come back as I add in new content for Draft Six. And Draft Six begins NOW.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

Those of you who’ve beta-read Lament of the Dove for me or who have been following my posts about the edits to it may recall that among the various bits of feedback I’ve gotten (both from Carina Press’ editor and from beta readers) is that it was a bit unclear as to the distinction between the nation of Adalonia and its smaller neighbor which it absorbed, Alendar. It was suggested to me that I rename one of them in order to help make the place names more distinct, and I’ve been thinking about that. Alendar is I think the one I want to rename, given that I’m less wedded to that name than I am Adalonia.

That got me to thinking. A lot of the names in this story are mutated versions of Gaelic names, but some of them were inspired by Norse-style names–like ‘Vaarsen’, Kestar’s last name, and a couple of other surnames of minor NPCs. So when I looked up what various place names in the real world are in Scots Gaelic, I was surprised to see that the Scots Gaelic for Norway is ‘Nirribhidh’.

That immediately grabbed my eye. If I finagle that around a bit the same way I’ve done other names in Lament, I may be able to come up with a replacement name for the unfortunately conquered nation of Alendar. The question is, what altered spelling would look best?

This is where you all come in. Tell me, o Internets, which spelling you like best? I do want this general idea of names and I think I prefer these vowels–they help create a different look than ‘Adalonia’ when reading, and a softer sound when I say it aloud. It’s also something that sounds in-universe like it might have been derived from an older Elvish name, which is appropriate given that the folk of Alendar have always been friendlier to the elvenkind than the Adalons have.

If you’re looking at this post on LJ or Dreamwidth, please click over onto the original post on the WordPress blog to vote on the poll. Otherwise, drop your vote in the comments!

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Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.