See, I really should update this blog more often than once a month! I’ll try and post all of the latest newsletters this weekend, so you can use them to catch up. I can’t believe that my last blog was before I finished The Baby, so I have a lot to tell you. I finished writing it on the 29th of June. It was thirteen weeks to the day to write it and it finished at 164,389 words.
Then, I sent it to the alpha readers. Oof! It was painful getting their feedback. Unlike when I sent The Wedding out for people to alpha read, I was nervous as shit about this book and worried about how it would be received.
You may have noticed how I struggled with writing this book, it felt like it meandered its way to a conclusion. Don’t get me wrong, it was a super enjoyable read, lots of fun…but nothing happened. Just a series of events that Lita and Sebastian powered through with ease.
By the time the third alpha reader, who is not traditionally a romance reader, gave me exactly the same feedback, I knew it wasn’t just a case of people who read romance being drama whores. The book needed to be broken. Enter The Breaking™.
After I sulked for a week over the loss of my happy book, I assessed it and it was very clear what needed to happen. There is an event that occurs in the book and even when I was writing it, I knew that the book could go one of two ways when it happened. I was basically traumatised by writing The Wedding, so I couldn’t really torture my characters at the time, which meant I proceeded to write a really happy book.
Lots of fun and jokes and love and sex. It was beautiful and lovely and I adored it, but there was no tension. Once I put my big girl panties on and started The Breaking™, I got back into the book, again. Believe me when I say that the drama is there, now. There’s an entire sub-plot filled with dramatic tension between two characters that I did not expect to happen. I thought that it would go an entirely different way in that regard.
I still have a few chapters left to edit before I resend it to the alpha readers later today, but I’m happy with it. All in all, I cut 21,275 words out of it and so far, it’s sitting at 170,489 words…because that’s how I roll. For the record, not a single alpha reader complained about the length of it, and I’m accepting of the fact that I just write longass books.
I made a teaser for it from one of my favourite quotes. All of my favourite quotes in it are basically from when people are being feisty, but I particularly loved this one:
I love that when I posted it on Facebook, someone immediately guessed who said it and who they were talking to. I mean, it is a bit obvious if you’ve read the other two books which two characters would be having a conversation like this.
Anyway, we’re on track for the November 18th release date…Sebastian’s birthday! I’ve been putting off trying to find an editor while I was doing the rewrite because I had no clue what the final word count would be, but one of my beautiful readers has given me a list of people to try and I’ll be emailing them today and seeing what their availability is like.
What’s next?
Once The Baby is safely in the bag, I’ll be moving back on to Gabriel’s Album. Now that I’ve seen what happened with writing The Baby, I’m glad that I’m not planning to write The Stalker until next year. I think that I need a break between torturing characters as badly as I tend to torture them.
Because the story of Gabriel’s Album is already written, it will hopefully feel less like fresh torture and might make it easier to write. We’ll see, I guess! In the meantime, I’m trying to release a chapter of Sebastian on Wattpad every week and you can find it by clicking here. At a minimum, I’ve been doing one every two weeks. I really enjoy the story of the band first meeting and how they got together.
I do also send a weekly newsletter where I give more frequent updates and you can subscribe by clicking here. I also update Facebook the most often and you can find my page by clicking here and from there you can find my reader group where we talk about books, hot men, and Cruise Control.
Anyway, have a great day and happy reading!
I’m curious to know, are you a pantser or plotter?
I’m mostly a plotter. I use an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of dates within the series (to hopefully avoid plot holes!)
I knew the overarching timeline for each book, and as an example, when I started writing The Wedding, I realised it started right near Harrison’s 30th birthday. So, it made sense for that to be the red carpet event at the beginning of the book.
That being said, I still follow the characters’ lead. The difference between the outline of The Wedding when I first started writing and when I finished writing was astounding!
– Sian
Spreadsheets are rough. You need Scrivener (LiteratureAndLatte.com), you can keep all your writing, character info, important plot points etc in one place. It has been invaluable in my projects, for everything from blogging, to articles and creative writing. It has multiple uses.
Plotter is good. I’m mostly pantser, and I always end up writing myself into a corner. Which is mostly why I end up jumping from project to project, not quite finished with any. 😀
The Wedding was so hard to read. I was hating Harrison, but at the same time I wasn’t. I think Heather might be my favorite person from the books. With how shredded I felt having read that book, I can’t even imagine how you must’ve felt having written that book. I went through most of my Kleenex box. You slay me, lady. You have a new fan for life.