May 13th, 2010

Just last night I officially finished my 10th draft of Merlin’s Blade, and it is the best yet.

Not only have I removed a lot of passive verbs (thanks, Scott !), but I was able to improve the writing at many, many spots.

Chief among these was my prologue, which I have rewritten yet again. This time it didn’t need a total rewrite, but rather a lot of subtle changes to improve the mood, and also more strongly establish the character’s peculiar qualities.

Not only that, but I changed the prologues character from a young father in his late twenties to a young man of only fourteen.

Why?

In my former version, this character was never seen again, although his son was.  Now he is the son himself, so you get to meet him later on in the book, only seventy years older.

So, take a look at my new prologue and let me know what you think!

When you finish that, I’ll let you in on a secret … you can read chapter 1 and chapter 2 here.  Normally you have to sign up for our mailing list to read these, but seeing as they’ve been public on Authonomy, I thought I’d make it available here.

Still, signing up for the mailing list is encouraged!

Also, I have abandoned Authonomy.com as a way to get noticed by Christian publishers. The amount of effort is incredible, as it is a "scratch each other’s back" system and your rank is only marginally related to your novel’s quality.

The other problem with Authonomy is that, despite the claims, I have seen no evidence that the Christian publishers are looking at the Christian section of the website.

If they had, and had done so like the secular portion of the site (removing the top 5 to the editors desk each  month), then my rank would have gotten to within 3 spots of the top five … and I might have persevered. But alas, this did not happen, and I don’t know that it ever will.

I do owe some people reads before I remove my novel, and I will do that shortly.

Where do I go from here? That depends on what happens with a few queries and proposals I have sent out.

I am waiting to hear back from two agents and one publisher, so we’ll see.  Most likely I’ll start working on book two, MERLIN’S SHADOW, once again, but who knows?

There’s even a slim chance I’ll start working on an entirely new series of novels .

I’ll keep you posted.