Working Weekend #amwriting #amediting

Monday again, eh? I guess it's best we take the advice of a fortune cookie I once got:  Any day above ground is a good one. (That's better than the one my son got one time: Oops. Wrong cookie.)

I spent my weekend working on Ramiel's story (Blood Prophecy) and a blurb for the series. If any of you are aspiring authors, let me give you this advice: blurbs can be a huge drag. I don't usually have a terrible time with them for individual books, but for an entire series, it took an entire day of adding, deleting, walking away, and repeating all those steps over and over before I got one I liked for the Sons series. In the end, this is the blurb I stuck with:

Fulfillment of an ancient prophecy leads to vampire civil war. As the eight Sons of Navarus battle to save their world, each Son will find the one thing worth dying for: love. Follow the Sons of Navarus series and fall in love with these sexy Alpha heroes, their strong heroines, and an epic story of passion, treachery, and survival.

Thanks to Dawn, Julie, and Gayle from my street team and my editor for giving me some great direction.

As for Ramiel, I posted on FB that I was loving the way this story was going and I am. As a committed plotter, I know what's set to happen, but the tone and word choice aren't planned and far more organic. Ramiel has so much anger, which makes the tone so markedly different from Terek's and even Saint's.  As I write his story, I'm in a very different mindset than I was from Terek's.

My editor has been sending short messages about Terek's book all weekend. One of the things she noticed is how different the tone is from Saint's. You see, Saint fought against everyone (Vasilije, Solenne, the past...) and the tone of his book reflects that. But Terek is a very different kind of hero from Saint and even Vasilije, so his book has an entirely different feel to it. He doesn't fight. Well, that's not exactly true. He doesn't fight often. Terek is far more quietly confident than Saint or Vasilije. It comes from being a vampire longer, but it's also his natural personality. He's strong but quiet, so while he's not the loudest or brashest of the Sons, when he's in a scene, he's a very strong presence. I didn't characterize him with huge actions, but instead the key to understanding his character is through things such as a touch or the way he words his answers.

It's very important to me that each Son has a unique style and tone, so hearing from my editor that I've succeeded with Terek's book put a huge smile on my face. I don't think I've ever worked as hard with a character as I did with him.

And one of her notes couldn't have been truer: Each word seems important, as if the reader would miss something if they skimmed.

I'm very rarely accused of going on too long. LOL  I don't tend to repeat things a lot, and I appreciate the economy of words. I choose them very carefully in each story (that's the tone thing again), so I force each word to work hard. She jokes that when she begins the edit of my books, she undoubtedly finds it difficult to cut but always finds more where she thinks I should add.

Hope your weekend was a good one and here's to a wonderful week!