Rewriting a book is-as I've experienced over the past several months-damn near impossible. Okay, not impossible, but really really difficult.
After releasing The Forgotten King, I realized that I was more than a little unhappy about the quality of The Dragon Gem. As I've mentioned at some point in this blog before, The Dragon Gem was not written to be published. It was a pet project done in secret while I was a stay-at-home dad to surprise my wife. At some point, when looking for a print on demand company to get a few copies printed for my wife, friends, and family, I came across Amazon KDP and thought, "What the hell? Why not publish it on there so that my friends can download it if they want?"
And then, people started downloading it-some free, some not. Not a ton of people necessarily, but way more than expected. And that's when I started to treat it as a true, published book. So, when I went into The Forgotten King, it was with a completely different mindset. And thus, I was much happier with the results. The only problem is that I became unhappy with The Dragon Gem.
That's when I decided to do a major edit. After only a couple chapters, that major edit turned into a major rewrite. I was naive enough to think it would be simple. I mean, the entire story was there. I just had to make it sound better. Easy, right?
Wrong.
Thinking it would be a semi-quick process, I thought I could release it with the release of The Forgotten King in May. Nope. Maybe July, then. Nope. Surely August. Nope. September. Nope. Okay, surely I can get it out by October 31 so I can devote NaNoWriMo to the first 50K words of book 3. Sadly, nope.
Now, I'm not going to be too far from the newest deadline of October 31. The Dragon Gem Reloaded(okay, that's not the name, but it just sounds cool in true cliche Hollywood fashion) will be out by November 7th, barring any unexpected diversions. And still, it will be released as an update so that anyone who has downloaded it before can just get the update once I've gone through the process of emailing Amazon to get it set up for prior purchasers do so.
The point of this whole rambling mess of a blog is that even though it's taking a ridiculously long time, The Dragon Gem will be out semi soon, and I'll be giving up a chunk of NaNoWriMo to make sure it is. It'll be worth it. I promise. I'm still going to try to get my novelette out by the end of the year, but it may be pushed into early 2014(January early), but I'll post about that later. Although, I do have all the artwork for it now, and am excited to get it all put together.
So, to end this blog, I must first apologize for its rambling nature, as well as the probable lack of proper grammar(gonna put the time it would take to read over it into working on The Dragon Gem). Also, for those who do not know, my wife and I are expecting our second child in March. I've posted about that here before, but now we know what we're having and it's gonna be a .... Boy! I'm sure I'll be getting plenty of good story idea during the sleepless nights to come :).
Hope anyone reading this is doing well, and I hope to have The Dragon Gem Reloaded(I promise that won't be on the new - and incredibly awesome - cover) out soon! Happy Halloween!
Brian
I concur. I had to almost rewrite the first third of my third book as it wasn't flowing in my chosen points of view. So I understand. BUT if the revised version of the Dragon Gem is even better than the original, which I thoroughly enjoyed, it will be worth it.
ReplyDeleteAnd congratulations on your second coming son. How exciting. I became a grandmother six months ago. He's the joy of my life. But he's growing up way too quickly.