{"id":6026,"date":"2010-05-13T18:19:07","date_gmt":"2010-05-13T23:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2010\/05\/13\/update-on-my-writing\/"},"modified":"2010-05-13T18:19:07","modified_gmt":"2010-05-13T23:19:07","slug":"update-on-my-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2010\/05\/13\/update-on-my-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"Update On My Writing—With Secret Link"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just last night I officially finished my 10th draft of Merlin’s Blade, and it is the best yet. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Not only have I removed a lot of passive verbs (thanks, Scott<\/a> <\/strong> !), but I was able to improve the writing at many, many spots.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Chief among these was my prologue, which I have rewritten yet again.<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

Not only that, but I changed the prologues character<\/strong> from a young father in his late twenties to a young man of only fourteen.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

So, take a look at my new prologue<\/a><\/strong> and let me know what you think!<\/p>\n

When you finish that, I’ll let you in on a secret … you can read chapter 1 and chapter 2 here<\/a><\/strong>… 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.<\/p>\n

Still, signing up for the mailing list<\/a><\/strong> is encouraged!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Also, I have abandoned Authonomy.com as a way to get noticed by Christian publishers.<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/strong> of the website.<\/p>\n

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<\/strong> … and I might have persevered. But alas, this did not happen, and I don’t know that it ever will.<\/p>\n

I do owe some people reads before I remove my novel, and I will do that shortly.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Where do I go from here? <\/strong> That depends on what happens with a few queries and proposals I have sent out.<\/p>\n

I am waiting to hear back from two agents and one publisher<\/strong>, so we’ll see… Most likely I’ll start working on book two, MERLIN’S SHADOW, once again, but who knows?<\/p>\n

There’s even a slim chance I’ll start working on an entirely new series of novels<\/em> .<\/p>\n

I’ll keep you posted.<\/p>\n

Views: 37<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\nJust last night I officially finished my 10th draft of Merlin’s Blade, and it is the best yet. Not only…\n<\/div>\n
Continue reading “Update On My Writing—With Secret Link”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,14,15,36,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-merlin-spiral","category-1-merlins-blade","category-2-merlins-shadow","category-progress-reports","category-publishers","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/MerlynSpiral_Medium26.jpg?fit=320%2C160","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p67v0M-1zc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}