Sorry to have been missing in action the last week or so. I've been in REVISION HELL. If you've never been to revision hell, picture a one-sentence bit of feedback from an agent or editor. And then imagine yourself mulling over that bit of feedback for a couple of weeks before it dawns on you that you have to rewrite the last quarter of a 100,000-word book. To put that in an equation format:
1 sentence of feedback + 3 weeks of mulling = 25,000 new words
Daunting. And at times... Hellish. The end result? A much better book. A much tighter mystery. A ramping up of the tension. I'm thrilled with the way these revisions came together, but we'll see what "they" think! This was a great learning exercise in which I was able to apply some of the things I learned last year when I added a 30,000-word subplot to an existing book to get it up to single-title length.
I'm looking forward to sitting down with a print out of the new version this weekend. I'll read it cover to cover to make sure everything syncs, and then I'll send it off.
If you've read the "About Marie" section of my website, you know that my dad has been a great supporter of my writing career. Long before I ever wrote the first word, he'd urged me to get serious about my longtime desire to write fiction. So when I finally finished my first book, shortly after my mother died, he became my No. 1 fan. Never much of a novel reader, he read each book as I finished it. Usually, he takes whatever I did the previous year with him on his winter jaunt to Florida.
This year his Florida trip was cut short by an injury, and he's been staying with my family for a couple of months while he recovers. While he's here, he figured he should get caught up on his reading... Gulp... It's one thing to have my dad read my sexy romance novels when he's fifteen hundred miles away. I'm finding it's another WHOLE story when he's reading them three feet from me. He recently finished the advance review copy of Love at First Flight, which got two thumbs up. When we were out to lunch today, he told my waitress friend that there's "some hot stuff" in that one. OY! Thanks, Dad! He's reading my first attempt at romantic suspense now and really enjoying it. Can't wait to see what he tells people about that one!
