Galley Artwork for Time of Death

Dear Reader,

This morning I received the galley artwork for Time of Death. The artists at Five Star did a great job capturing some of the imagery of the novel without giving too much away. Hopefully you'll pick up a copy when you see it in your local bookstore or Amazon.com when it becomes available in September. Seeing the cover art makes the novel seem more real than it has before this moment. Then again, it also reminds me that I've neglected my main character. I need to get to work finishing The Changeling's Brother (the sci-fi novel I've been editing) so Mel Rush's next adventure can begin!

My interests have always collided with getting things done. For those who know the Myers Briggs personality typing methodology, I'm a classic INFP. Interested in everything and focused on nothing. A bird landing on a branch a hundred miles from my desk can draw me into a day's musing over the reasons birds land and trees grow. The mental wandering is good for concocting subject matter but not so great for getting it down on paper (virtual or otherwise). It doesn't help that there have been some very real distractions in my life for the last couple of months. I promise to discuss these distractions at length when a more opportune time presents itself - for the moment let it suffice to say that I've been distracted.

With a Good Friday off and nothing to occupy me but the rain falling outside, it's a good day to do a bit of catching up. I'm putting on my editor's hat and sharpening my red pencil. Soon I'll be nailing down the first chapters of Mel's new adventure, tentatively entitled The Inner Fire.

February Update

Dear Reader,


Months have passed since we last spoke and I hope they've all went well for you. Here's hoping January brought a happy New Year and Valentines a love to see you through the dreary cold of March and into springtime's bliss. Looking back at the blog I see that I posted a December update but nothing since - my apologies for being so incommunicative! I will strive to correct the situation immediately.

Steady progress is being made on the latest novel, though I have to admit the thing is stubborn. At ninety thousand words the harsh realization that a good amount of pruning will be required has settled in. Added to that, the work itself has become thicker - first edits are always that way for me, a critical eye sieving through the initial creative tailings to find the worthy material and discard the waste. In the case of the current novel there have been some fairly hefty plot changes which have required a lot of in-depth editing just to get out of the first draft stage. Next comes what I like to call "the bloodying up" of the document - a read-aloud with a red pen in hand. Usually a pen sacrifices itself on the altar of editing during this stage. It's sad and slow but a necessary process.

Time of Death is slated for release this September. Currently it's working through the shadowy halls of the publisher, going through whatever dark rituals are required to make it a book. Sometimes I think of Kevin Bacon pledging Omega Theta Pi in Animal House when I imagine what a book goes through to be released. I imagine hooded figures in candlelit rooms flogging the manuscript…thank you sir, may I have another. Regardless, somewhere out there the first installment of Mel Rush's adventures waits to be sprung on the public. Hopefully it will be to at least moderate acclaim!

Indiana in February is a gray and gloomy place. Even someone like me, who loves the whole winter scene, gets a little burned out on slate-gray skies and bare trees by this time of year. I find myself checking the bed where we planted lilies last fall, looking for the first signs of life pushing through the soil. It's an over-eager impulse since the last frost date for Indiana isn't until early May. Still, there's a fluttering in my heart each time I look out the window at the swath of soil we worked last year. I hope the squirrels haven't undone most of our work!

Long before the lilies come up, though, will be the 'official first rite of spring' - morel mushroom season. In Indiana the season kicks off right around my brother's birthday, a handy reminder for me to get my hiking boots and best stick ready to prowl the ravines and woodlands. I am absolutely no good at this outdoor activity, not that I'm any sort of woodsman per se. My father has returned from his mushrooming haunts with garbage bags full when the fates align and there's a good season. Myself, I'm lucky to see a single mushroom (in fact I think that's my record in recent years). Still, there's been a lot of snow this year; if the weather doesn't turn dry we might be in luck.

That's the way things are going at the moment. I will provide you further updates on the book's progress as September draws nearer and I hope to have my second manuscript ready for hard editing within the next month. Wish me luck!

The Hard Work

Dear Reader,


The real work started this week. I'm over half-way through the first edit of The Cinder Girl and it's time to go back to chapter one to start a hard edit.

Creating is fun; you're rambling along with the story and finding where it takes you. Every chapter is a new discovery. As an author, I believe it's the closest you can come to experiencing your novel in the same way your reader will. You're navigating a new country without a map (at least if you write like I do) and the only way to find out what's on the opposite side of that next mountain is to climb it.

Editing, on the other hand, is a bit like farming the ground you've discovered. Lewis and Clark might have mapped the Northwest Passage but they didn't build the roads and bridges, carve out the settlements, pull stumps from the fields, and plant the crops to sustain the townsfolk. To edit a novel is to work its soil, to improve its fertility and harvest every bit of creative fruit possible. It's hard work. In one week I've managed (along with writing two chapters) to edit just seven five pages of printed manuscript. In the process it grew to seven pages of (I hope) better constructed story. I'm telling you, it's tilling the soil!

The best things aren't the always the easiest, I guess. When the work is done I feel good about it, I'm proud of what I've achieved. Sitting in my office on a Saturday afternoon, hammering out paragraphs, it seems like it'd sure be nice to nail it the first time through, though!