USA Today Bestselling Author
Last night, I turned in ALMOST HUMAN (tentative title), Davina’s story. Woot! I’m so glad. I think it still needs some tweaking, which is why I’m really looking forward to hearing what my editor, Grace, thinks. She’s a sharp chick and I really value her input.
I’ll also be polishing up two stories for Woman’s World magazine today and sending those off in the next two weeks. One of them, “Finding Mr. Darcy,” I have really high hopes for.
I wrote the end. I really did. But it didn’t work out right. It didn’t feel right. So I’m writing another ending.
I feel a little badly about that, especially considering my very patient editor has been looking forward to reading this for months now. But on the other hand, I truly think the story will be much the better for this extra attention and it’ll be worth it in the long run.
On a side note, in my snippet file, the place where I dump all the big sections I can’t bear to delete completely, I have almost 16,000 words. LOL. I’d post a chunk here, but I just looked at the last part I pasted there and it sucks. So never mind!
I have taken all the comments my critique parner and my beta reader gave me and incorporated them into the manuscript. I’m now trying to finish the epilogue–usually my favorite part of a book when I’m reading. As happened with the rest of the book, I had to start over. I’d remembered that the Powers That Be at Ellora’s Cave frown upon babies and/or pregnancy in epilogues. They see them as cliche. I see them as fitting.
However, this is one hill I’m not willing to die on. So instead of writing an epilogue that showed Davina four months along, I’ve had to rewind and show her just before the wedding instead. I’m actually glad it worked out this way because now I can bring Mariah, Paige and Livvy back for a cameo appearance in this–the last–volume in the Be-Wished series.
Good news. I have finished the first draft of Davina’s story. Some of you may remember her as the wacky wish fairy from the first three Be-Wished books. My critique partner is hard at work reviewing it and after I do everything she says (LOL) I’ll be sending it to my editor, Grace at Ellora’s Cave.
