I’m baaaaaack! Miss me?
I was gone for a combination of things, only two of which are really important here. The first, and most relevant to whatever forum you’re reading this on, is getting the fifth draft of Storming Amargosa done. My plan to use NaNoWriMo to redo this draft almost worked. Almost. I spent December 1 rearranging and rewriting the epilogue. And frankly, I like the whole thing better. It’s four POVs. Well, five. I had to pivot to another character late in the story for the fourth POV for…
Reasons.
Narrative reasons. That said, the reduced POVs worked. It’s not a giant mess this time. There are occasional side trips to minor points of view. And the storyline on the homefront has more impact. The story begins and ends with Davra Andraste’s POV. (There you go, Kalene!*)
I do see where to cut, namely some scenes between Tishla and JT. I love how those two evolved in this, but they suck up a lot of space, so already, I know where the cuts are being made. Overall, though, this draft is going to stick. I can make cuts and flesh out some underdeveloped scenes (mostly new ones), but I don’t see the structure of the novel changing from here out. My betas may have other ideas.
This novel kicked my ass. I should be into Down the Rabbit Hole (a distant prequel to the Compact Universe) by now. I should be outlining Jim Winter’s second Holland Bay Squad novel. I should be deep into the first Suicide novel. And I found an old Trek story I outlined years ago that’s begging to have the serial numbers filed off. (Besides, different characters from canon, and the mandatory changes just add more story fodder.) I also need to put together the final draft of Flight Blade, do an indie pub of No Marigolds (an experiment that Clayborn Press will be watching closely), and putting together the final Kepler book I’m sending to Clayborn. Much of this was delayed because Storming was so hard to write. And rewrite.
The second reason for the delay is personal. My wife recently took ill, and I’ll have more to say on that tomorrow. We’ve had some struggles getting her the proper care. So… I could blog or I could do rewrites. If I didn’t do the rewrites, the blog’s going to be lean on content. So I shuttered it for a couple of weeks.
But suffice it to say, the new content journey of Amargosa and its related arcs is over. I can move on to new things. And I don’t have it nagging me while my wife recuperates.