First draft is finished… now what?

The first novel I ever wrote was the vampire novel, Ritual of Blood, back in 2000-2001. Back then, the reason I wrote the book in the first place was just to see if I could actually do it. I’d never written a short story before, let alone a whole novel, and it took me eighteen months to go from the first word to ‘The End’. Once I had taken it through a couple more drafts, I sent it out to see if I could get it published, which it was in 2003. Since then I have written six more novels and a collection of short stories, and last night I finished the final book in my Vampire Hunter Trilogy, which Ritual of Blood was the first book in that series.

Wampyre’s Gate concludes the trilogy, and signals the end of an eighteen year journey with these characters. Now that the first draft is complete I have a specific process to go from that to a publishable novel.

The structure of the first draft of any of my book consists of what I call the bare bones of the story, leading the characters from the beginning of the plot to the end. Once that is done I allow my story to rest for about six weeks. I do that so that when I come back to it for the second draft, I am looking at the story with fresh eyes. In the second draft I build upon the bones of the first, adding the meat of the story and making sure that everything is consistent. All subsequent drafts are to fix any grammar and spelling problems before I sent the novel out into the world.

During those six weeks or so I’m not just sitting down twiddling my thumbs, I take that time to prepare to write my next story; creating the characters and plot, and starting the writing process of the first draft.

The next book I am going to be working on is the third book in my Ramton Gallow Mysteries series, The Fangs of Layton Manor. I still have many more ideas for books to come after then as well, so I’ll be keeping you all posted in this blog of my writing progress.

Take care for now, and I’ll catch you next time.