The SIEGE Revision Letter Has Arrived

Revision letters are rather terrifying.  I remember when I received my first one for THE FIRST DAYS from Melissa Singer, my editor at Tor, and I felt a little dizzy.  It wasn't so much overwhelming as it was amazing.  That was the day I truly understood how thorough a big house editor truly is when it comes to edits.  Melissa asked me questions about things I never even thought about.  She focused my attention on details that enhanced the story and the characters. When I finished working on those first revisions on THE FIRST DAYS, I felt a great sense of accomplishment.

When I received the FIGHTING TO SURVIVE revision letter, I was completely overwhelmed.  I had originally chopped the online serial into three books, it was because of the sheer length of the story.  It hadn't occurred to me to try to make the second book a stand alone tome, but this is exactly what I had to do for the Tor version.  Readers had to be able to pick up the second book and enjoy it without reading the first one.  By the time I was done with the revisions, I was very proud of my work on FIGHTING TO SURVIVE. I learned so much and felt very accomplished.

Now the SIEGE revision letter has arrived.  I've been looking forward to this revision letter with great anticipation.  When I originally self-published the three books, I knew the last book was far too big.  I had found a naturally occurring ending with THE FIRST DAYS and FIGHTING TO SURVIVE, but SIEGE ended up being quite big.  I considered chopping it in half, but I couldn't find a place to cut it.  I finally gave up and published it as a massive book.  The fans had loved it online and I was publishing it for them, so I opted to just increase the cover price and not slice it to bits.  I also had no idea how to chop it down.

I have been telling people for months that I fully expect a huge chunk to be ejected from SIEGE.  At least 50, 000 to 70,000 words.  It is a massive book, with a word count of around 160,000. According to my editor, I need to slice around 60, 000. I already knew the revision of FIGHTING TO SURVIVE was going to impact some of the plot points in SIEGE.  Not necessarily changing them, but altering how they played out just a bit.  In my mind, I already knew where I planned to change things.  I also knew the sticky parts where I struggled when originally writing the story and hoped Melissa would give me notes for those sections.  My hope was that when I got the final revision letter, I would have the guidelines I needed to streamline the book and make it more powerful.

After reading the revision letter, I feel I have a solid guide for the revision of SIEGE.  People around me are panicking at the word count reduction, but I'm not.  If I can make SIEGE a sleeker, better book, I'm thrilled to do so.  I know some of the cuts might sting a bit, but it's up to me as a writer to make it work.  I fully believe I'm up for the challenge.

Now to make a book that was never intended to be a novel (but an online serial) into a kick ass novel.

Time to go to work.

As The World Dies: Siege Cover Ordered and More

I spent a good chunk of Saturday and part of Sunday struggling to use GIMP to make a collage of what I imagined the cover looking like to send to the amazing artist known as Detra to use as a reference. I'm new to GIMP so it was very slow going. Plus, my computer felt the need to update itself throughout the weekend and not play nice. This resulted in my final jpg being corrupted and unable to open.

So Detra ended up with stick figures with arrows and text saying things like "Jenni with an ax" and "zombie head." I hope he can make sense of it! I may post the new cover and my terrible stick figure cover in the near future.

Meanwhile, I am still working on ATWD:Siege. I am taking Thursday and Friday off this week to dedicate to the novel. My goal is to be done with the rewrite by Sunday afternoon. Then I'll dive into the edits for the first part of the book as I hand off the second half to the editor the following Monday.

My goal is to have As The World Dies: Siege out by August.

Pretty When She Dies Update and More!!!

I handed off the proof copy of Pretty When She Dies to the final proof reader on Tuesday. She was pretty excited to get her hands on it and gave me the biggest grin. I anticipate her getting the final edits back to me next Tuesday. After that, I just have to make the changes and upload to the publisher. I believe we are on track to have the book out the final week in November.

I've been handling a few queries about Pretty When She Dies, which I find very exciting. The As The World Dies Zombie Trilogy was originally online, so it had a built in fan base. I was a little concerned about Pretty When She Dies because it did not originate online. But the response at Fear Fest to the novel and the queries I have received do give hope that readers will find it intriguing.

Update!

The proof reader is loving the book and moving through it swiftly. It looks like we're on track!

I do feel that Pretty When She Dies has something to add to the vampire genre. It's a break away from the paranormal romance and recent urban fantasy novels. I'm not sure what I would classify it as, but it has got its own pulse going.

Meanwhile, I'm almost done with the As The World Dies: Fighting to Survive rewrite. I hope to have it with the editors sometime next week. Which feels AWESOME!

All in all things are going well right now. I can't complain. If you have any questions about the Indie Author movement or about the books, please drop me a line at gothgoddessrhia at gmail.com.

Interview, Website, and other Fun Stuff!!!

The Odd Mind Magazine Talk Radio Interview!!!

My interview Monday night with AngelLesa of The Odd Mind Magazine was quite a bit of fun. I rambled on (as I'm tend to do) a few times, but I felt we had a good discussion on why I chose to be an Indie Author and about As The World Dies: The First Days.

Indie Author Thoughts

Being an Indie Author is a scary, but fun experience. I do feel, sometimes, that I am flying without a net, but it is exhilarating. I'm not sure where all this is heading and I'm fine with that. The reality is I wanted to take creative control of my writing and I have. What comes next is a big unknown, but I'm happy with how things are progressing thus far.

Someone asked me if any publishers have approached me. The answer is yes. What did they discuss with me? That is private, but I am still standing firm at this time to being an Indie. Will my mind change in the future. I don't know. I would have to consider any offer made very seriously and see if its in sync with my personal writing goals.

But even if I do sign with a publisher at any point, I will STILL be putting out my own books and free fiction. I just love the whole process of creating my own novel from the story itself to how it is presented.

Progress

Edits for Pretty When She Dies are almost done. The proof editor is doing a GREAT job catching the tiny stuff (that I tend to not see) and it's coming along nicely. I hope to order a proof copy of the novel very soon. The cover looks amazing. My husband has done a really great job. I cannot wait to see it on the cover of an actual book.

Website Update

My husband is also revising my website. Since we are new to the publishing game, we're still figuring things out and he realized we needed to revamp the site. The new version should be going live soon. Once we're sure we have what we like, we'll most likely be moving the site to rhiannonfrater.com at the end of the year or the beginning of next.

As The World Dies: Fighting To Survive

I'm writing away. Writing on the way to work, on my lunch hour, and on the way home. The evening is left for spending some time with my husband and having dinner, before diving into the edits for Pretty When She Dies. But what I am writing out by hand for ATWD2 is really, really awesome and a lot of fun. Today was a huge Jenni scene that I forgot to write the first time around. Or maybe I thought I had written it. I was shocked to not find it when I read through the story. It left a big huge plot hole and it left me shaking my head.

That is definitely one good thing about the rewrite: patching up the holes!

As The World Dies Gets Longer

I'm deep into the second novel now. Splitting the original story into three books was something that was hard to do, but needed to be done. The sheer length of the original online story stunned me when I downloaded it and compiled it (someone told me they thought it was only 300 pages long..uh..no).

The average novel is between 70,000 and 100,000 words. As The World Dies clocked in at almost 400,000. It was 1,600 pages long. To say I was shocked was an understatement. I tried to chop it into two books, but that didn't work. I ended up having to separate it into three books. I was surprised to find two naturally occurring breaks in the story, which made it easier to figure out where the books ended.

I know a few people complained that the whole story should have been one massive book, but the page count of the original is not available with the PoD I'm using. I'm reading a trade paperback right now that is about the size As The World Dies would have been in its entirety. It's unwieldy and annoying in size and the spine is already trying to tear apart. I can understand why Createspace has limits on page count.

As I was reviewing the original manuscript, I realized that I had three stories sitting right in front of me with very different themes for each part.

As The World Dies: The First Days deals with the first months of the outbreak and the desperation to build a safe place to live as the zombies take control of the world.

As The World Dies: Struggling to Survive (which I am working on now) examines how the survivors face new difficulties as their numbers increase and they try to build a new society in their safe haven. The threats from within become more obvious as the human bandits join the zombies as threats from without. This one is definitely heavy on the character development as the new society in the fort struggles to find its way. The action is still really good and I'm actually adding more to it.

As The World Dies: Siege is the darkest novel and the longest. The scope expands to include other survivors, threats from high places, and the themes of sacrifice and redemption comes into play.

As I work on the second novel, I'm wincing as I see plot lines getting all tangled up and needing some serious straightening out. I remember when I was writing this part of the story there was a lot going on in my personal life that kept me from writing as regularly as I had been. I can see where I screwed some things up royally. A whole chunk of plot never made it into the story though it had been in my head. I have just reached that point and I'm going to have to untangle the threads and weave the new scenes in. I felt a little frustrated when I realized how much I had screwed this segment up, but at least I can fix it now. That is one consolation of releasing the story as a trilogy, I can work on each novel separately and keep to the theme of that particular section.

By the time I'm done with the rewrites and revision of all three books, As The World Dies: The Complete Story is going to be even longer.

How do I know this? The first three chapters of As The World Dies: Fighting to Survive is all new material.

I Am Not Pulling a George Lucas! I Swear!

I had a comment to my last post that was really quite sweet. I appreciate hearing from fans that loved As The World Dies. It's very encouraging to have that kind of support when doing something as crazy (or not so crazy) as self-publishing. Knowing that there are fans out there dying for this story in novel form is the major reason I chose to do this.

But the question was asked (as it has been by others) as to how the story was being changed. From Glenn's comment "The question I have, are you going to change much of the story when you do self publish? Just curious. Personally (and of course you're the author and know what you want) I think the story is EXCELLENT and really doesn't require much changing."

I have to admit that portion made me giddy.

As The World Dies has several things happening to it. Let me explain.

First, the original online story ended up being well over a 1,000 pages long and around 300,000 words. In other words, it was one massive huge gigantic enormous wowzer of a tome. I had been considering printing it out, but when I realized how massive it was I decided it was time to figure out how to manage it. As I was looking through the story, I realized there were three naturally occurring "endings". In fact, during the writing of the story twice fans thought the story was over when it was actually not. So I chopped up the book into three sections.

Upon rereading the story, I realized that scenes I thought were in the story, actually were not. These were actually important scenes that gave further depth to the characters and I was bummed when they were not there. But I have to give myself a break since I was writing on the road and sometimes had no Internet connection to double check what I had previously written on the forum. At that time, I never imagined I would make As The World Dies into a novel, let alone a trilogy. If I had, I may have taken greater measures to not let anything fall through the cracks plot wise or with character development. In the new version, these scenes are included. I am not taking anything out of the story or removing any characters.

It's not until the third book that readers of the original will see any major scenes added. When I wrote what was to be the last novel in the trilogy, I admit, I was rushing to be done. I had a lot of negative things happening in my life at that time and the darkest part of the series does come in the final book. I deliberately left out a huge, dramatic event in Jenni's story because I just didn't want to go there with her. Yet, it was an important part to her development. It will be restored in this version.

Also, someone who was supposed to die (and I let him/her live) was left alive because I just didn't feel like killing anymore characters. I broke my sacred rule of "if they die on the movie screen in my head, they die in the book". I was just emotionally wrung out at that point and didn't want to do it. This time around they are going to die. And I ain't telling who it is.

Finally, the book is being edited for spelling, grammar, etc. I am also doing research on things I glossed over before.

So what does the revision actually mean? A tighter, better written story. Nothing is coming out, but things are going in. Things that make SENSE. None of that Han Solo shoots second in the revised version of Star Wars.

'Cause, as you long time fans know, Jenni ALWAYS shoots first.