Update on Kholvaria, Veznek, Cassidy and Broken Tomorrow

Lots of projects in the air at once!

Update on Kholvaria (Book 2 of the Color of Water and Sky)

Kholvaria, book 2 of the Color of Water and Sky, is now in the editing stage. If you haven’t read the news, I finished writing the first draft earlier last week. Currently, editing has been flying by. Apparently this rough draft does not need as much tweaking as the rough draft for Iris did. I find myself making minimal changes, a big difference to the editing I did with Iris.

Part of the reason I don’t feel the need to edit as much is that I think I’ve just become a stronger writer. I suppose I’m learning to edit as I go along.

Additionally, I’ve been getting a lot of notes from my editing helper in France who helped me with the first book. She’s been GREAT! One scene in particular had so many notes, almost every sentence was changed (it was a sex scene written from a female perspective. I guess I didn’t portray it very accurately). But all these changes are good. These kind of criticisms help me improve the writing.

I’ve edited about 1/3 of the book so far. I’m way ahead of where I thought I’d be at this point in time. Ideally, I’d like to edit through as much of Kholvaria as I can before Christmas. My mother, who was exceptionally helpful in the editing process for Iris, has offered to help me with the editing process with Kholvaria, only earlier on in the process than last time. I’d like to get a second draft out to her by December 26th, so it’s a race against the clock for me!

Update on Veznek (Book 3 of the Color of Water and Sky)

Meanwhile, book 3 of the Color of Water and Sky is in the pre-writing stage. Right now, I’m calling it Veznek. This book is going to be the hardest one to write of them all. In this part of the story, each individual character is split up on their own adventure. Essentially, I’m juggling five different stories at once, each hugely significant and more or less independent of one another. In a way, I feel like I’m writing Game of Thrones now.

That means my outline is completely different. Previously, I’ve outlined the whole story together. For example:

Chapter One (Bruce):

In this chapter, Bruce goes to the store and buys some milk. He then leaves the store and gets hit by a car.

Chapter Two (James):

James is a doctor in a hospital. A patient named Bruce arrives in the hospital after having been hit by a car.

Chapter Three (Martha):

Martha gets a call from a doctor named James, explaining that her husband, Bruce, is in the ER. She is worried and goes to visit him in the hospital.

While each of these chapters were told from a different character’s perspective, the story flowed logically from one to the next. In other words, the story was the same. A man gets hit by a car and goes to the hospital.

With Veznek, the story is more like this:

Chapter One (Bruce):

Bruce goes to the store and buys some milk. He then leaves the store and gets hit by a car. He realizes that the driver was his old nemesis, Seymour, and plans to take revenge.

Chapter Two (James):

James is a doctor in hospital. When the hospital’s electricity goes out, James has to operate on a patient named Felicity without the use of technology. It is a big challenge.

Chapter Three (Martha):

Martha is preparing for a big sales meeting in Nashville, when suddenly she gets a call that the meeting is canceled. She starts to worry about what may have happened to cancel the meeting.

In this case, you can see that each individual character is basically experiencing a different story. Whereas in the first example, the characters were all part of the same story. That’s the biggest challenge with Veznek. It’s like writing five books at once.

For that reason, I’m outlining it differently. Each character gets their own individual outline. Not only that, but when I actually start writing, I’m going to write it character at a time, not chronologically. So for example, I would do all of the Bruce chapters. Once I finish with Bruce, I will do all of the James chapters and so on.

This is a different way to write than I’ve ever done before, but I’m excited to see how it turns out. In some ways, I think it will make it easier for me to create arcs with a more cohesive flow to them, since I won’t be stopping to interrupt chapters with perspectives of other characters in between.

Now the question is… which character should I start with?

I guess I’ll have to wait and see.

Update on Cassidy (the spin-off story to the Color of Water and Sky)

In other news, I’ve finally put a dent in my progress on Cassidy, though by “dent”, I mean I’ve written a chapter and a half. It’s not a lot of progress, but I’m trying to write this book exclusively when I’m not at home and therefore don’t have access to my laptop. In other words, it’s a commuter project. So progress is expected to be slow.

That being said, I can already get a sense of the pace I’m going for. Cassidy will be easily the fastest paced story in the series and will also feature the shortest chapters. It reads really well so far. Even going back and reading what I’ve written, I feel engaged from start to finish. I think Cassidy will be my hidden gem. I anticipate it will sell really well. In fact, I could see people who haven’t even read the main series getting into it.

Now that it’s been a few days since I first announced Cassidy, I’ll give the first hints to the plot:

Cassidy is set parallel to the events in the Color of Water and Sky series. Though it will be a considerably shorter book than any others in the main series, it will elapse roughly the same period of time as the entire series combined.

Readers of the first book should recognize the title. It refers directly to the Cassidy X20 submarine prototype that went under attack at the begging of Iris, thus initiating this whole adventure.

Here’s the cool part:

Cassidy will feature some already-written chapters from other books, specifically the prologues of both Iris and Kholvaria, and weave these chapters into a larger narrative. That makes it a little bit easier for me, as a writer, because two of my chapters are essentially already written (and no, I did not count them when I said I finished one and half chapters already).

Update on Broken Tomorrow: A Dystopian Boxset Collection

In other, other, other news… I can now say, to much satisfaction, that I’ve made back all the money I’ve spent to get Iris published. I’ll admit, it took longer than I anticipated, BUT, the even bigger surprise: the source of this profit.

It is no secret that I am still working on getting people to buy Iris. As a new writer with only one book in the series out, it’s no surprise that I’m having troubles. This is to be expected. All in all, I’ve made less than $100 from Iris sales so far.

But that’s not the only book with my name attached to it. If you recall, I submitted Iris to be part of a boxset collection called Broken Tomorrow. You can read all about it HERE. The other authors included in this set are well-established and have a strong fan base. My inclusion in this set benefits me the most, as I have the smallest base and cannot alone bring in much of an audience. So for me, this is an awesome opportunity.

I received information today regarding the success of this set. Though I will not get into any specific numbers, I will admit, it is HUGELY more successful than I ever imagined. Being a part of this set was probably the best decision I’ve made so far, from a financial standpoint.

Unfortunately, I won’t get any of this money in hand until around April, once the boxset is taken off the market (as a reminder, it’s only available for a limited time and I’m only getting paid at the end). So that’s a big bummer. Obviously I’d like to have the money now. But based on how the numbers look, I’m really happy. With a few more months  left to go, these numbers are only going to go up and up and up. Come April, I will finally get to experience the financial the rewards of my hard work.

I find it ironic that the project I’ve had my hands in the least is the one proving to provide the most payoff. But I guess that’s how life works sometimes.

 

In conclusion, if you haven’t figured it out, I’ve got a lot going on right now. With so many projects in the air, it’s a bit overwhelming, but also exciting.

Expect a chapter sample from Kholvaria up on the blog soon. I know you guys will love it!