Read yourself a story...

I “published” Broken Road in November 2011.  Mike and I had been through it together and separately more than ten times.  We had whipped that puppy into shape…or so we thought.  I currently have four versions of the book sitting on my desk.  The first three have major typos and continuity errors; the fourth has no continuity errors, but still has typos.

Two weeks ago, I decided that Broken Road needed a massive slash-and-trash edit.  I cut three and a half pages out of the first two chapters.  Then I decided to read it aloud to myself.

You would not believe how many more typos I have found.  Reading aloud has to be the best ever tool for editing a written work.  Not only do you catch all those pesky mistakes that your brain doesn’t even register when you read silently, but you’ll have a better idea of how good your book is when you hear it out loud.

So, I reckon I’ll have one more version of Broken Road.  By the way, it’s a really good story.

Happy Birthday, Broken Road

     I'm awake, not by choice, at 3:26 a.m., having been awake since 12:40.  This type of occurrence usually irritates the heck out of me, but I've just realized that yesterday was the second birthday of Broken Road. So it is entirely appropriate that I would have had one of my fall-sound-asleep-only-to-be-wide-awake-two-hours-later events tonight.
     See, when I was in the thick of writing Broken Road, this happened all the time.  The characters couldn't shut up long enough for me to get a decent night's sleep.  They routinely woke me up between 2:30 and 3:00 a.m., yakking incessantly about what they wanted to happen next in their fictional lives.
     I sound crazy, don't I?  That's how I felt! Honestly, the made-up people from my story would wake me up.  
     They let me sleep now...well, nearly all the time.  But I guess they were a little insulted that I let yesterday slip by without recognizing their birthday.
     With apologies, happy birthday, Roxie, Cole and Caleb.  I love you guys...but promise me you won't go back to the middle-of-the-night gab fests.

With Deepest Apologies....But it Had to Be Done!

I offer my most sincere apology to those who have read Broken Road.  I am working on a slash and trash revision of the first two chapters; there's just too much verbiage there.
I have learned that, because I'm new to this writing gig, my style is to barf way too much info onto a page.  That's one of the ways I get to know my characters.  Even after (or maybe because of) reading the blasted manuscript a dozen times, it seemed impossible to pare down.
But it had to be done, and I don't think anyone will miss the additional info.
Jiminy Crickhead, will everything I write take two years to ripen?  In three days, it will have been two years exactly since we started Broken Road. 
Yet another pointer to the fact that I am not a patient person.