Title: Battle Scars: Men of the Cross
Current word count 86,895
Per my blog post last week, BS:MotC was shipped to editors. I read 2 new scenes from the novel to my writers group last week. I touched them up after receiving their feedback and inserted them into the mss. over the weekend. Now, truly, truly, I’m won’t touch it again for several weeks to come.
While I wait for the red-lined (or comment filled/highlighted) copies to be returned for revisions, round 2, I’ve plunged into the sequel…
Title: Battle Scars: For King and Country
Current word count @20,000 words
I spent the weekend of the 3rd/4th doing a read-through of the 16K words I’d written prior to the 1st of June. I was happily surprised. The tempo and content of the sequel is pretty darn good, even if I do say so myself. That’s not to say it’s ready for writing group – it’s a rough draft with plenty of holes, for example: a page of dialogue followed by a note such as “The table was laid out [food & drink, not too lavish as they weren’t expecting company]” or the highly useful “xxx.” Aye. There’s work to be done.
Re-reading is dangerous. The internal editor clicked on, and I found myself starting to edit. Stop! I finally settled into reading-only mode. The idea is to push through to the end. Still, just the getting there will be quite the journey – some of it fun, some of it painful.
I’m introducing at least 3 new major characters. Henry’s sister, Beatrice, and Elle Westbury and her nasty brother Edric. (Why do I write ensemble pieces with a cast of thousands?) Bea and I are getting to know each other at the moment. I seem to have a clearer grasp on Elle and Edric. And, of course, all your favorite characters from MotC are back, well everyone but King Richard who is biding his time in captivity at Trifels Castle in Bavaria. Oh…you don’t have favorite characters from Book 1 yet, do you? Well just you wait!
Back to the writing!
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