Three Chapters Down, Twenty-Four (?) To Go

I wish I had words of wisdom. Instead all I have is a 16oz. Red Bull and 22 pages of editorial notes. It. Is. Awesome. Entangled sent me the most detailed, helpful, and encouraging set of notes a writer could ever hope for. There were a lot of big suggestions made which will require a lot of work. I'm hoping to plow through a chapter a night and get a revised manuscript back to the great and awesome Tahra Seplowin in about a month.

Some chapters are being more or less COMPLETELY rewritten. Let me say this right now: nothing is harder than getting back into the swing of a book once you've already written, edited and revised it. I love my novel, I do, but it took almost three days to really get the feel of the characters and voice back like I used to know them. For so long all I did really was eat, breathe, and dream ZHUKOV! Getting that inner drive/obsession back took some work. Rereading the story start to finish, sifting through old idea journals I kept, and even a couple of character sketches helped get it all back home in my heart.

So now I'm powering through! I've done a major scene totally different after toying with one of the ideas Tahra offered up and I absolutely love the direction it ended up going in. I also am thrilled that she specifically asked for more scenes with Nik and Dr. Halliburton. Who loves twisted mind games and psychoanalysis? This girl, right here.

And now for something completely different: