Jezebel Draft One Finished

I just finished the first draft of Jezebel today! It integrates my authonomy posting with Icarus converted to third person 2011. There is way more sex and violence in this book than I intended. But I'm going to need help deciding what (if anything) to cut. Tammy will be my usual first reader. Then, I'll send it to Katy for line edits and consistency. Stacy, a friend who normally reads romances may critique it next. I have to ask DJ to look over the science, and Weston for the overall. The more eyes the better.

Before writing the last chapter, I re-read it all, and trimmed a few loose ends. I wanted to hold it all in my brain while I wrote the closing. Several scenes evoked strong emotions. When I wrote the last paragraph,  the name Benny chose for his daughter actually made me mist up -- Miracle Redemption Hollis. The story ends with girl on the cover of Time magazine with the one word headline "Miracle".
It wasn't the ending I told Weston I had in mind. But the finale I described to Weston was actually the ending of the girl's story. 576 double-spaced pages was enough for this book. For thrillers, I have to learn to focus the scope on what is happening over just a few days.

the Flood

Foundation for the Lost is officially published in e-book (with age warning removed)! The first ten review copies have "sold". I got the proof copy for the print on demand today and fixed two one word typos.

Scarab has been reduced in price to get more traffic (and spread the sample chapters).
Icarus is shipping to ebook as soon as Tammy looks it over one last time for the techno-babble factor. It's fifty-five pages, but it moves fast.

Jezebel is almost done with the first draft. At 113.7K words, I have about five chapters to go. I just wrote a really cool farewell scene for one of the supporting characters. Only two more chapters to insert and the rest is just kind of wrapping up the loose ends (or denoument as the French say). It was my first female lead, and I think she's one of the most kick butt heroes I've ever had.

What's next: I usually set my first draft aside for a few weeks. I do an outline and then edit for extraneous matter. I generally cut 10 percent or so. That should put the final length at a respectable 107K. Then I fine edit on a line by line basis. Then other people get to read it for big picture changes. Third person line edits come next, and lastly I comb over it for the final formatting changes, etc.  Most of this depends on the time contribution of others I have no control over.

During the set aside period, I intend to prepare another book for publication -- the Temple of the Traveler. It's a completely constructed world. I wrote it for Eos before Devi left.

I finished the first draft of a podio episode of Scarab. That's something else I can do in my "spare" time.

Explanations for Cover Images

All my covers have been designed by Renee at "TheCoverCounts.com". I've had friends ask me why I picked the images I did. We wanted to try to tell a little of the story with each cover, as well as grab some attention. Our average is about five drafts till we're both happy.

1. Scarab is the a blue-green Egyptian scarab beetle, the main character's online handle/logo in the story. It's a little transluscent at the edges because the armored vehicle is invisible. The 1's and 0's are because it only exists in a computer model, and due to the cybercrimes. Add some explosions and viola. By the way, the scarab pushing the sun is the symbol for transformation, which is the core of this Cinderella story.
2. Icarus uses the space shuttle launch (a great dramatic image in itself) because of the two launches in the story, a symbolic atom/forcefield because that's what the icarus device is, and a backgroup Mandelbrot pattern because Math is part of everything in this story.
3. Foundation for the Lost uses a chess board to represent Ryoko, the wizard game of power. The parchment background with the mystic symbol of Metatron stands for the instruction manual for the universe written in 1917. The split shows there are two polarized sides in the conflict, two sides of the Tree of Life. The lightning bolt shows magic in conflict, and jazzed it up.

Icarus Soon

I got a line editor for Icarus--Katy Sozaeva. Weston introduced us. She did a great job cleaning up the novella. Katy even found things the professional missed in the first sample three chapters for Foundation. She's looking over two of my old novels to recommend which one I should polish up next.

CreateSpace gave me two choices when I complained: get $120 back or spend another $2404 on a more complete comprehensive edit to get what I really wanted. (Every writer and English major out there just choked.) Don't worry; I took the money back.

I will put out the novella as soon as my wife Tammy reads over it again for techno glaze over detection. I find that I put too much techno-babble in my Science Fiction drafts and need a non-geek to mark where it gets to be too much.

Scarab is out in Print On Demand format.
Jezebel's Ladder is at 94K words.
Foundation is ready to go with the final cover. I swear, it's ninety percent of the way.
This patience stuff is hard!