Why Revising This One Is Such A Slog

That ought to be a question. Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, today writing (complaining) about my progress (or lack thereof) in revising the historical romance originally titled Firebrand (Harper Monogram, 1993) into a better, shorter book to be reissued under a new title, probably Treacherous Visions. Dangerous Visions or A Dangerous Gift would have been better, more accurate title choices, but other books, by authors better known than I am, have already used them and I’d just as soon pick something different.

Title aside, although I’m still using the points of view of both the hero and the heroine (as most romance novels do), it has become much more a life story than a love story. It may always have been. The proposal I submitted began this way: “In the twentieth century she would be called a psychic or a channeler or perhaps a person with a gift. In the first part of the seventeenth century there were other names for such people—names like witch and heretic.”

From the back cover of the original paperback

The basic premise is that when my heroine, Ellen, steps onto a spot where powerful emotions remain from a past event, she experiences that event as if she was a participant. The trancelike state she enters, if only briefly, is treacherous.  Those who observe it fall into two categories—those who suspect she is possessed, or worse, and those who think they may be able to use her “gift” for their own advantage. Either way, she’s on dangerous ground.

map of Norumbega in 1570

After I got my rights back and had reissued Firebrand as an e-book, I plugged it in my “Backlist Tuesday” posts on Facebook with variations on this text: “Part of this novel is very loosely based on stories about an ancestor of mine and his maidservant. The whole family was banished from Plimoth Plantations because she dared smile in church. Most of the book, especially the paranormal bits, is strictly fiction. The story starts in England, then moves to colonial New England, where Ellen Allyn’s visions put her at risk. Her only hope of survival lies with dashing adventurer and treasure-hunter Jamie Mainwaring, who is searching for the legendary city of Norumbega in what is now (more or less) Maine.”

My ancestor, by the way, was also banished from three settlements in what would later become Rhode Island, including Roger Williams’s Providence, before founding a colony of his own at what is now Warwick, Rhode Island. I based my children’s book, Shalla, on another part of his story.

The first time around I had a short deadline—three months to go from a one page synopsis to a 100,000 word book. Now I have as much time as I want to take and can cut as much excess as I like, but it’s still turning out to be a slog. At least this time around I don’t have a stress headache, as I did for the entire three months. The problem now is that a lot needs fixing.

Looking back, I suspect that part of the stress was caused by having been assigned a new editor. The revision letter she sent me suggests that she didn’t read a lot of historical fiction. She wasn’t sure what “tumbled” meant (and this was a romance editor!) and she questioned the well-established fact that among English sailors in centuries past it was a badge of honor not to learn how to swim. Her biggest complaint was that the hero and heroine spent too much time apart. Since that was crucial to the story, I compensated by having them think about each other whenever they were separated. I’ve ended up cutting most of those bits. Aside from being pretty sappy, they don’t ring true in a macho adventurer living in the 1600s.

Oddly enough, this editor thought I had included too much historical detail. In historical novels, the usual complaint is that there isn’t enough. I will admit to way too much “telling” when I should have been “showing” and that’s one of the things I’ve been fixing, along with cuts for wordiness and repetition and moving around passages that were in the wrong place in the text. The result will be a much shorter book, possibly under 80,000 words.

What New England settlers probably looked like in reality

As I write this I haven’t quite made it to the end of the first revision, but I know I have at least two more passes to go. One will be for continuity and to fix the fixes, possibly adding back bits I shouldn’t have cut and/or adding new material to make it clearer why a character behaves a certain way. The final revision will be an attempt to root out all the typos that have somehow crept in.

I’d like to say Treacherous Visions will be published soon, but I suspect it’s going to be several more months before it’s ready to launch. If I follow the practice I developed after the three-month deadline debacle, I’ll be letting the manuscript “rest” for at least a few weeks between each revision.

Meanwhile, stay tuned. In my April post I’ll be writing about the challenge of finding the right cover art to fit this story.

 

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. In 2023 she won the Lea Wait Award for “excellence and achievement” from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. She is currently working on creating new omnibus e-book editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.