It's here! Book 19 is available!

That was a test of attention and persistence.

Book 19 is done! I had a lot of rewriting on this one. I knew it would be trouble when I wrote the first draft. Making the setting plausible--where technology doesn't work--is a difficult bit of explanation. I went back and forth on that every other editing round. I finally settled on a little bit of mystery. It doesn't have to be fully explained. It just has to be plausible. Good enough.

I enjoyed the story, but I found a lot of issues in editing needing rewriting. And I'd go back and forth a bit on some small issues with each round of edits. I also would find my usual issues and hope that I caught all of those.

In the end, it's MUCH better than the first draft! If you could compare the first draft to the final draft, you'd see the dramatic difference in quality. First drafts are getting the ideas down and all the pieces in some format or another. However, there are always word choices to consider. And I caught a few inconsistencies to fix. I hope I didn't miss anything. 😔

Sometimes, as with this, details change in big ways, but most of the time, those are good enough to need only minor tweaks. This story had a lot of unusual pieces to it, especially since the secondary characters of the world became almost equal to the series characters in terms of importance in this. Developing those characters adequately and their lives required a lot of work.

In any case, I'm glad it's done, although I worry about what else I should fix. Art is never finished, only abandoned. I would go on fixing forever and never publish if I didn't stop myself at some point.

ALL THE KING'S MEN is done! The ebook will be appearing in the next few days at online retailers.

Happy reading!

The Church & Science: Galileo - Living Divine Mercy (EWTN) Ep. 185 w/ Fr...

A bit of the Catholic church's promotion of science at the beginning of this, dispelling lies that say otherwise.

He Thought It Was Just Art—Until Souls in Hell Cried for Justice

This explains why I believe graphic sex in books (among other sins) will lead writers (and others in the entertainment world who promote such things) to hell. They are leading readers to sensual lusts, which damns the creator's soul by damning the souls of their audience.

And if readers and watchers (of videos) engage with such immodest, impure, etc. works, they will condemn their own souls. For the creator, it's multiplied by what they do to all those souls of their audience. It's not puritanical. It's not prudish. It's just fact. We don't get to change God's rules. He is outside time and space, therefore never changing. These are His rules, not mine. Disobey at your own peril (eternal damnation).

You can read more details on the sin of scandal here. There are many different ways this applies in our lives, but guard you senses and restrain your tongue (or fingers on the keyboard) to avoid this.

8 Embarrassing Mistakes When Writing Child Characters

8 Ways Your Writing Reveals that You Don't Understand Women

9 Male Character Mistakes That Scream “A Woman Wrote This”

Not what I expected

This manuscript is really making me work to fine-tune it. I knew it was rough, but I didn't imagine it would need this much work!

Part of the delay was trying some ideas that didn't work for certain points of the subplots, so I had to change some things back. In other aspects, the smaller plot holes revealed themselves from behind the curtain that was pulled away during previous big edits. I feel like this will never end. The problem is that it's improved so much that it makes me wonder what else I'm missing. I hate that feeling.

I'm midway through round four of edits, and Book 19 is finally having the fat trimmed. I'm at the point of being ready to be done, but these changes are more than a few words here there as I had expected at this point. Unfortunately, it's still in the stage of major trimming. Copyedits will require one more round.

Help! I feel like I'm stuck in editing Groundhog Day!

Fr. Joseph Iannuzzi: When "God permits certain faults in a soul..."

Happy Catturday... animals

This weekend is a weekend of reading. I hope this is the last round of edits on Book 19 of Forgotten Worlds.

While I'm doing that, I often end up now with two cats. And when the weather is nice (not this weekend), I've been getting out to ride my horse. So I have a bit of that too to share.

First up is a video of Buddy sucking his tongue, a weird thing he does once in a while. He was shedding when I was last out too. It's that season, when I start wearing a fur coat on my way home. I trimmed his hooves to start and was so sore afterwards (think power squatting for long periods of time with weights and pulls!) that I just did a little trail riding on the boarding property. He was good for that.

"My bucket is empty, Mom!"

Next up is Bilbo being a cat model this morning showing his different sides.

Big yawn

And the old man is accepting Bilbo better. These were taken earlier in the week when I was editing. Dargo curled up next to me and Bilbo wanted to be there too but respected Dargo's space. They laid next to me for an hour without any issues and Dargo was more and more comfortable with being close to Bilbo and by the end stretched out as much as he could. Bilbo has always been respectful of his elder housemates--not an ounce of aggression in him!--but they've taken time to accept him.

Not sure about this, but a good start

Getting more comfortable

Completely comfortable

Suki decided to enjoy her corner of the dining room rug this morning too to satisfy an itch on her back.

I thank God that in sending us a new cat, He sent us Bilbo. He couldn't have sent us a stray any better behaved. Bilbo has been a perfect gentleman, other than wanting to engage the old kitties in play when they don't want to play. Now that all three senior kitties have had their teeth cleaned and their mouths have healed from extractions, they're a lot less moody. But Bilbo has also been living nearly four months in our house.

That's it for now. Time to get back to editing.

God bless!

status of Book 19

Book 19 required more rewriting than I expected. I spent this past week rewriting another segment of Book 19. Two chapters... a whole week!

I hope this is the last of the major rewrites. It really needed it, but I can't believe how much better it is. I really had to hammer this book out, and I added to it. It's now past 58,000 words! This is what's taking so long. I'll call it the curse of GRRM, since this has a bit of GoT feel to it, at least in plot. I don't glorify violence or include sex scenes, although there is a very promiscuous character whose behavior is talked about. And I finish my projects.

Each book in this series is a unique adventure and I've enjoyed every one. This one is just taking more time than I expected--both in writing and in editing. I knew it would need a lot of editing, but I didn't expect this much. However, I'm glad I put in the work. It's a much better story for it. Certain subplots were pulled out to be more fully developed and are so much required to support the main plot that they are like the legs of a stool.

I'm very happy with this one but will need one more editing pass. This is taking much longer than expected (one more week?), but the results will be worth it.

Thanks for your patience.

Editing progress

Just a quick note on the progress of Book 19 editing...

I had a good book, but after these edits, it's even better. A lot of big things have been fixed. I have a love/hate relationship with editing. I love when I find things to fix yet hate that it was ever needed. I'm glad to realize and fix the issues, though.

Aside form what I mentioned previously, I've expanded one scene and corrected others that I realized weren't quite clear or in the third round ended up being head-scratchers of what I was doing in the first draft other than getting the thoughts down to the best of my abilities. This is nothing new. It's all part of the writing process.

I'm 3/4 done with round three of edits. I fixed so many big issues in the second round in some places that they overshadowed the other issues still there. In any case, the story is getting beaten into shape. Each round of edits refines it in new ways. If you saw the difference between the first and final drafts, you'd be amazed. The transformation is huge--from subplot issues to character descriptions to scene locations to action correlations and logical sequence corrections. And then there's the minor issues of pronoun/antecedents, cleaning up unnecessary narrative or redundancies, etc.

Once I'm done with this pass, I'll see how round four goes. I hope that will be the last, but a fifth could be needed, which would push back the publishing date. I'll see what happens. I hate that I've been finding issues (no matter how minor) with earlier books that I thought were done. It puts a new fear in me of none of the books being ready, but I know part of that is also just me getting nitpicky and always wanting to fix things. (This is the longest of the books of this series so far at 57,000 words, which is also why it's taking longer to edit.)

Once I'm done with this, I'll go back to writing... Book 22 awaits. With that, I'm getting close to the end of the series, but there are a couple of adventures to write to answer lingering questions before the series climax.

Thanks for reading!

What Near-Death Survivors Can Teach Us About Heaven & Hell

Beautiful truths to feed the imagination. I love science fiction and fantasy, but the truth is even more amazing than anything I can imagine. Only the author of creation could have given us the ability to imagine something beyond what we can experience in this life.

What do you think of this ER doctor's spooky story?

More big edits than I expected

Well...

I'm not as far in edits on Book 19 as I expected. I found another scene that required some major rewrites.

I was about 4/5 done in this editing pass when I hit upon a Starfire shard flashback revealed to Nya. It's an issue in which I give a description to transition faster through narrative to the important points. I realized some things were out of order and needed to provide a more logical explanation going into a full scene. That took a while to iron out, along with ideas to make the other scenes in that sequence better.

I remember thinking when I was writing the first draft that the story overall would need some big edits but didn't worry about it then because I knew after some time away it would become more clear to me. Boy, has it!

It's not like having to rewrite a whole story (like I did for Starfire Angels and Broken Wings 15-17 years ago between the two); but it is a lot of rewriting/rearranging. Every story varies. After I draft a book, I set it aside for what ends up being 6-8 months. By the time I get back to it, I have a fresh take on it. I still remember it, but I've been away enough to view it more objectively. I view it from an editor lense and rip it apart.

I add details and better transitions. (You wouldn't want to read the first draft!) I also add those in the subsequent editing rounds and end up adding quite a bit, along with rearranging sentences (ideas), taking out unnecessary narration, etc. Where the drafting stage was the setting down of most of the plot and major ideas, the editing stage fixes the issues and fills in the gaps. The last editing round is always taking out excessive words, fixing awkward phrases, correcting typos, and fixing formatting.

I'm almost done with these huge fixes in the story and am anxious to start the next round and see what I find in that to fix that might have been introduced with these big changes or that I've missed because I was editing while being tired or foggy brained. I'll have a better idea of how these changes will feel in the flow of the story in the next pass.

It's coming along, being refined and honed.

And I'm still making my way through the earlier books. I'm finishing up book 7 and have found a few fixes to make in that (usually 1-2 chapters while on the treadmill). I'll always find fixes in my books. Art is never finished, only abandoned. I write first for myself, so I do enjoy going back and rereading the books. What I don't enjoy is knowing I'll always want to fix things. I love this whole series and will be enjoying them long after it's finished, but I hope at some point that I'm happy with them as they are.

Thanks for reading.

ps - Bilbo takes any lap he can get, including my lap when I sit down, and Dargo wants his spot next to me, even overcoming his hesitations about Bilbo to be close. The other day, I had Bilbo half on me and Dargo laid next to us. To get up, I had to slide Bilbo off my lap, which meant he and Dargo were next to each other. I managed to get some pics of that moment. It was an amazing step in their relationship. No hissing or striking at each other. First one then the other got up... and went out to the kitchen thinking they would get food. Small steps.