Black Rose Writing

It's been too long since I've gotten an update up; although this is not for lack of material.  Middle of March Nina and I finished off the first draft of “A Fire is Woken”, the second book in the “Wings of Fire” series.  It's good to have the first draft done, but I'm already ready to edit and fill in the holes that we missed first time around.

The finished manuscript is 130,000 words—far too long for any publisher to consider it unedited.  Until we start querying, though, we intend to take nothing out that we don't want to.  The book is very complete, and it spans four years!  To compress it will be a hard, and painful, process.  There was some doubt when we first finished as to whether the book was too slow and had too many endings, but a read-through has assured us that it moves very rapidly!

Which is very exciting in and of itself.  I would have to say that I feel “A Fire is Woken” has more quality than “Through a Rain of Fire”.

In other news, we've had another press, Black Rose Writing, interested in the novel.  Some looking into the background of the press, however, shows that they've been known to be dishonest in the past.  Also, they're on both Writers Beware List and Publishers Beware List.  Even if we could make a go of it, it would hardly be a publishing credit!  In fact, much to the contrary...

Also, they are very little help with the marketing aspect.  The author seems to have to do it all themselves.  We feel that we'd do better to go with a press like OkeTarra that would pay us 30% of royalties rather than Black Rose Writing that would give us 10% if that's the kind of the service we're going to get...

I rather liked the look of Vintage Romance Publishing, but they opened for spring submissions on April First and I saw that they only take manuscripts under 75,000 words; and “Through a Rain of Fire” is 95,000 words.  It looks like OkeTarra will be our next query.  They're POD (Publish on Demand) but they have a good reputation, and that has to count for something.

So...that's our newest endeavor!

A Fire is Woken in progress!

Progress update on A FIRE IS WOKEN.

Nina and I have been working very hard on it over the past few days and have now gotten to the stage where we're starting to put the pieces together.  Much too much of the book I wrote in advance...long before we actually got to the scenes.  Over the past few days I have written some 10,000 words, which has allowed me to put another 10,000 words together into a readable manuscript!  It's amazing to watch the book come together.

I'd have to say that with this addition to the manuscript I'm well over two thirds of the way through the novel.

Both Nina and I feel that we're outgrowing the book, which is, ultimately, pretty sweet.  Both of us have begun to delve deeper into darker writing, so sometimes keeping up the sweetness of the novel.

The goal is to have it finished by the end of February, and right now I think we're on track to make the goal.  It'll be wonderful to have the novel done.  In one way I think I'm going to miss it and I'm going to miss the characters, but.   It'll be amazing to have it done.

And ultimately I'm ready to have BOTH of the first two books published.  It's almost like I'm out of editing mode and into marketing mode.  Almost like I can detach myself from the books now...

Even if we haven't finished the second one.  ;)

Fun stuff, all of it.  You can all expect to have more updates forthcoming!

THROUGH A RAIN OF FIRE Completed!

A very exciting update on writing on the "Wings of Fire Series"!  For Christmas, Nina Hansen finished THROUGH A RAIN OF FIRE for me!  I'm absolutely thrilled that she did it and I'm very, very happy to have it done!

Previous to this it was very close.  It had a few tweaks to be made.  Little edits.  She went through and did a full edit on it, fixing the whole thing from start to stop and working the whole thing together so that it all runs smoothly!  No more cobbling together copies to try and read.  No more annoyances when there's a line missing or something does not flow smoothly.

It's done, and worth of being shown to an agent right now!  I cannot believe that we've actually made it this far.

Thank you, God.  This is a dream come true!

A FIRE IS WOKEN Desktops

These desktops are free for personal use, but are under laws of copyright and cannot be used for profit of illegal purposes.

THROUGH A RAIN OF FIRE Desktops

Promo time!  I have been working over the weekend on graphics for the first two novels of the WINGS OF FIRE SERIES, and I came up with some pretty cool desktops.

These are free for personal use, but are under law of copyright and cannot be used for profit by anyone but me.

That legality out of the way...

Characters You Care About

Nina and I talked it over and asked a good deal of questions and we've decided to not let Red n' Ritten have “Through A Rain of Fire”.  It was a pretty tough decision, because I was really hoping the deal would go through.

Red n' Ritten demanded more rights than we were willing to give which was what drew the line.  In one way I'm kind of glad that something came up that stopped it.  I'm not saying that I don't think that Red n' Ritten would have done a good job with the book or anything.

But Nina and I have had a dream of going big with this novel right from the start.  I can't say why, but it's like that's what we ultimately want from the novel.  Something large.

I think it's also that these books are our babies.  We love them.

I'm realizing that as I'm finishing NaNo.  I've loved writing in November, but I'm having a tough time getting through “Gumpaw”, my third novel this month.  It's light and funny—a detective story about a dog. But as I'm writing the humor and the laughs I'm realizing just how much I love the books that I write with Nina.

I realized just how much I loved “Strike in the Dark”--another NaNo novel I did.

I love the depth of those books.  These books...  Peter has this deep and marred personality, and I love it.  It gives me the shivers and I love it.  The depth of the emotion—that raw passion.

Nina and I were talking about personalities the other day and she brought up the fact that Peter seems to be pretty emotional for a Thinker.  (he's an ESTP)  I thought about it and I realized that yes, he does feel a lot.  But it's very ST feeling...deep.  And no only deep, but when STs feel emotion it's...  I can think of no word to better describe it than 'raw'.  There's no softness on the top.  Just raw emotion.

I love that.

I also love the power of the novels.  Talking to my sister last night I realized how much I missed writing the vivid imagery of “A Fire is Woken”.  It was a huge challenge writing that book, because I saw the whole thing in my mind like a movie.  And then trying to write it was hard because to try and get that imagery down on paper...

But I miss it.

I can't wait to get back to working on them.  I also like being able to take my time and write my heart into every word.

I don't know what I'll do when we finish the series.  I think I'll miss them a lot.

A Much-Needed Update

I haven't posted in much too long, which I regret, but sadly there has been no time.  I've been busy writing other novels and also we've been editing “Through A Rain Of Fire” more.  “A Fire is Woken” has also acquired several more chapters, which is pretty cool.

Most important news, though, is that currently we have a publisher interested in buying “Through A Rain of Fire”!  I can't quite believe it—because I hadn't expected something this soon.  Thanks, God...

The publisher is Red n' Ritten, an English publisher from Sussex England.  It's posing all sorts of interesting dilemmas, because I had never looked into foreign contracts and international rights and the such.  Also, marketing is different because it's an entirely different country!

Ms Joan Stanley, the head of Red n' Ritten has a grandson who is a friend of one of my friends...  It's a tricky thing, the whole process, and the sort of thing that I never dreamed of having.  Shows the strength of contacts, I suppose.  Something to that.

Ms Stanley is interested in having the whole manuscript...which is bit of a -gasp- situation because we're not fully done editing it.  I think it's pretty much good to go, except for Chapter Four which is really rough.  On our third draft we re-did the entire beginning, pretty much, and added and subtracted a lot of stuff.  We got through the third chapter and then NaNo began and since then we've been writing madly on other things, and the result is that we haven't gotten anything more done editing.

It's starting to look like we'll have to switch priorities here!

We've got a couple of questions regarding rights and such which we want answered before we surrender our precious novel to Red n' Ritten for evaluation, but hopefully they'll be cleared up soon.

I've got to say that I'm incredibly excited about this.  It's something that I'd never dreamed would have happened to me.  I lay in bed at night and think about 'what would happen if our book got published'--but then when someone says that they're interested in seeing the whole manuscript I start tearing my hair out not sure what to say!

Even if we decide not to go with Red n' Ritten, however, I think one good thing has come out of this.  We know we've got something good.  It's not hopeless and we haven't got a terrible book.  We've got something with potential.  It's just a matter of finding a good home for it.

I personally pray that Red n' Ritten will be that home!  It's so close...one of those things that you can almost touch, but not quite.  If this goes through I'll be the happiest girl alive.

There is another issue going with Red n' Ritten, though.  Primarily that, although they do marketing of their own, a lot of the marketing falls on the author.  So that means that how well the book sells will rely a lot upon how well I can get the word out there about the novel.  So I'm still trying to brainstorm ideas of how to get the word out there.

Ms Stanley said that a You-Tube channel often helps—an idea that I've actually tossed around!  So I think that I might have to give that a try.  I really need to look into how they work—does anyone have any idea?  I could use any help I could get.

A website might help too.  Any ideas on whether a blog is going to be enough, or should I look into launching a full-fledged website?  Mayhaps I should have payed more attention during Web Design class...  ;)

I'm open for any ideas you might have!  And as stated before...if you want to show support for the series, follow the blog!

Until next time...TTFN!