This is just a short update.

I have uploaded the first five chapters from The Dark Thorn onto the site. So many of you have been so patient with me that I decided I might as well share more of the book. In the first five chapters, you are introduced to 3 of the 4 Point of View characters. I hope you enjoy them.

Click HERE to read Chapters 1-5.

In other news, I've received my first rejection letter. You can read about it HERE. I have since queried Matt Bialer, a fantastic agent who represents the likes of Tad Williams, Patrick Rothfuss, Diana Rowland, Blake Charlton, and many others. As per the guidelines on his website, I probably won't hear anything back from him for 6-8 weeks.

I will make great use of my time. I have to redesign Terry's website, get my own website redesigned, and prepare for some rather large signings later this summer via The Signed Page.

Hope to hear from some of you after you've read the chapters!

Labels: Craft, Excerpt, The Dark Thorn

Over the weekend I killed the last four chapters on The Dark Thorn rewrite. They went fairly easily. Two of them were fairly complex to rewrite, the other two almost didn't change.

There are still some small things that need to be added in and it will take me re-reading the book again to spot them and fix them. But that is easy. I'm not worried about that at all.

Later today I will put together a single file that comprises the entire book. I will know how many words this version is and how many pages it is. I will also by tonight begin writing my query letter for it. That will be the fun part. The query is the harest thing to write in the entire pricess, I think, and since I've done it a few times, I love the challenge. Then I'll do some research to figure out who should receive the query... and away I'll go with finding an agent.

More soon!

Labels: The Dark Thorn

After several months of not touching The Dark Thorn, trying to figure out how I could get around not rewriting with Terry's suggestions and yet still have a better book, I finally gave in two weeks ago and began rewriting.

Going against the advice I'd give anyone else, I really wanted to submit the first 10 rewritten chapters with the shifted POV, not having the rest of the book's rewrite completed. I thought, quite erroneously, that I could have an agent look at the chapters, at which point they would tell me to finish the rewrite or to go with the first draft of the book.

I realized that would be foolish. I would be wasting the agent's time. And my own.

Once that understanding hit me, I unleashed a torrent of rewriting. For the last two weeks I have rewritten Chapters 10-25. That is 13 hour days to complete them. I'm not stopping. I figure I can rewrite each chapter, shift the POV characters, one per day. Some of the chapters coming up aren't changing -- in fact six of my remaining ten are not -- so I might be able to do more than one a day. We'll see. All in all, I plan on being finished with the rewrite a few days after V-Day.

My editor ex-girlfriend has been given each completed rewritten chapter. She went over the first 10 and was invaluable in finding places where I could tighten things up or where I had a word change issue. When I finish though, I am going to send it unedited to King's agent. If he'll still want it since we haven't spoken in six months. If he does, great. He'll read it and if he likes it, I'm his. If he doesn't, I'll let Rachelle finish her edits, do the small rewrite, and then start query agents and editors like all writers must do to get published.

So that is where it stands.

I will say this newly rewritten version of The Dark Thorn is infinitely improved. Shifting the focus of the book from Bran to Richard has improved it dramatically. Terry was spot on in that regard.

Once I finish the book, the fun doesn't stop there either. I'll be redesigning Terry's website as well as my own. I will be putting together a website for a friend who is trying to get into architecture school and needs to put her portfolio up online.

And then I'll begin work on the next book's outline.

There. An update.

Now back to rewriting!

Labels: The Dark Thorn, Writing