Writing for the Love

In a world called Livinity... I'd rather not mention how long ago I started writing my epic fantasy trilogy.... cough, cough, since 2001, cough, hack ... Back then I had the idea that I was writing a single fantasy novel. It wasn't until Livinity won a First Place award in 2011 for Unpublished Fantasy novel that I decided to take the advice of agent Nicole Resciniti of the Seymour Agency and split the book into two. The single novel was too long, and agents like herself would have trouble placing it with a publisher. As I went about splitting up the completed novel, I realized that I had more to tell. That included adding scenes to the first and second books, and expanding the story to create enough content for a trilogy. It's taken a lot of time. Book One: Done I LOVE writing in this world. I spent a lot of time editing scenes to improve world-building, as that was a weak point in early drafts. When I completed the latest draft of Book One in the tri...

For a long, long, long time, I've been working on an an epic fantasy novel called Livinity . There are older posts on this blog about my past progress. The unpublished manuscript even won an award in 2011. And yet, it still needed work. The latest round of edits involved splitting my 142K word novel into two books. One of the main reasons for that was the fact that I struggled to draw attention from agents/publishers with that huge word count, especially for a first book. With great, often eye-opening, feedback from my critique group, I worked on deepening characterization, adding tension, and enriching the other world setting--just a few of the things that needed work. I spent a lot of time editing, adding content, editing, adding content all while trying to anticipate where to split the novel in half. Something happened in the midst of all that writing and editing. My word count was climbing faster than I expected. I quickly realized that I might end up with a trilogy. Ye...

Just wanted to give a brief update on my days now that I'm an at-home writer for anyone who might be curious. Mon Edit Livinity Tues Edit Sprinter Weds Edit Livinity Thurs Edit Sprinter Fri Edit Livinity Random writing (ie short stories) A very generic, not comprehensive picture of how I spend each day, but a general idea of what I'm trying to get done. For a while, my focus had been deep editing Livinity , my epic fantasy novel turned trilogy. The process is slow. Many people ask me if I'm finished, and it probably doesn't make sense when I have to explain that I'm not. THE END is certainly written, and has been since 2008. But many years later, I'm redrafting yet again to make this the best book that it can be. Sometimes ideas for Sprinter interrupted my edits (women's inspirational fiction that I had set aside). Then I realized it might be fun to go back and forth between the two. And it is. Spri...