Secret Visions

Hey, hey, it's been a while. Life is nuts. I'm always happy when I make time to get back into my fiction writing. And lately I've really been making good progress on a rewrite from the ground up of my very first novel. I mentioned it here, and said it "is a Horror/Fantasy story, a quest story of sorts. Perhaps if you blended The Lord of the Rings (minus the military/political content) with Invasion of the Body Snatchers and a few old Russian folk tales, you'd get close." And I suppose that does a good enough job, if you simply must have those sorts of comparisons. Yikes. It's usually a mistake to set up expectations and I don't care for it. But I've also come from a world of filmmaking, where you must be able to pitch your story in such a way!

Anyway, I'm on Chapter 18 now, on pg. 123. Of course, it will undergo more shifting until the final edit. Right now the working title is Secret Visions in the Valley of Night.

I'm feeling really good about the way it moves, and the reshaping I've done to it. I'm coming toward the end, and it is all organically weaving together and building in pitch. I've been into the 3rd act before and felt them empty, when you try to prop up things or create them to make it more dramatic, but its contrived. That's not the case this time.

I wasn't sure I'd pick it up again. I don't have too much of a problem writing a book off if I feel it was good for a learning process, but wants too much work or time to be finished well. Usually it's better to just move forward rather than hover over an old lesson endlessly. But when I picked up this rewrite I began last year...I was impressed. As a reader, I could feel the pace and tension unfolding in my chest. I realized a good story was shaping up, and it made no sense to abandon it. I'm glad now I made that decision.

I find myself nearing the end of the book now, and ready to begin writing book two. It's that kind of story. And that will be exciting because that will be fresh writing. No rewrite of any sort. But my mind is filled with all the characters and the flow of this story, so I imagine the pages will write themselves, pretty much.

Good to see ya, talk soon!

JRH

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OH: PS. Goodreads has probably the worst interface for writing re WYSIWYG etc. This site is a mess. It took me five minutes to figure out how to post a blog post, it's not coherent design, and this text box post editor is so perfunctory and basic it feels like I'm in 1998 or something, when you have to write all your HTML out by hand. Come on, Goodreads. You want your authors to post here, please catch up to the times.