Sorry I haven't posted but there's a very good reason.
On February 28th I began a Novel Boot Camp. All of March and most of April I hacked and slashed and revised my novel.
All of this is thanks to my editor Jennifer Feddersen. She's helped me a great deal and I recommend her services to everyone.
The first thing I did was pick my target audience. I already had this in my head but it was good to make it official. 11-14 year olds. Young Adult.
The next thing was to create a Series Elevator Pitch and a Novel Elevator Pitch. These are short statements that explain the basics of my novel or series in an upwardly moving direction. I'll show you in a different post. I created a synopsis based on the Elevator pitch.
Editor Jennifer gave me a review on the basic problems my novel had and suggestions on how to direct my work in order to fix them. For two months I was tasked with revising the novel, chapter by chapter and scene by scene, tieing things together, throwing away things that didn't contribute to the plot as seen in the Elevator pitch and synopsis. I needed to ramp up the danger and make things more pressing.
Lot's of ideas came to me. I was inspired once again to do things that for some reason never before occurred to me in five years of writing/editing. Instead of taking seven years to tell this, I centralized the Salem Witch trials and set this book within five months.
I still taught the Advancement (how children vamps age) but there was no reason to age my vamps. Bad guys were tied together. Good guys were added. In fact a few new characters were added. Chapters were cut and new chapters added. Another new beginning and a deeper look into the Salem trials.
I tweeted my progress every day. My followers on Twitter and Facebook (as well as family, friends and fellow writers) all cheered me on. Boy did that help! Careful watchers of this blog saw no updates, but the Twitter posts on the right of the screen showed what I was working on.
So now this new version is done. It's turned in and I wont get another review and critique for a month. Time to breathe.
I plan to work on the Annabelle site, read, and relax before the next big charge.
