Where Have You Been?

In order to answer that titular question, I'm going to have to let you peek behind the curtain of mystery to what's happening out of public view. You see, our plan (yes, kids, they do have a plan) was to publish as blog posts the two stories we have written, one chapter at a time. Temporally speaking, though, the two stories overlap, so we had imagined that the best way to tell the combined story would be in a linear chronology, bouncing back and forth between the two books as time advanced.

Following that course, the next chapter to be posted would have been the day when the two stories split, and I had my choice of three or four chapters from June 28th that I could have used. I had planned on using the prologue to Day of Reckoning next.

Clearly, I haven't.

The reason that I haven't is that we are now looking into rewriting the second book, and changing certain elements of the story.

I know what you're thinking. Okay, I don't know what you're thinking, only what I'm thinking, and it is probably egotistical of me to believe that you would think exactly what I think. Sorry. Known bug in my operating system. I'll implement a workaround until I can fix it.

Anyway, what I am thinking is that a) it's been a year now since we finished DoR, b) rewrites take lots of time and energy, c) many things that I liked about DoR will have to change to accommodate our proposed rewrite, and d) much of the work already done on book 3, Final Reckoning, will also need to be scrapped and redone.

All of that is true, and all of it was brought up in the knock down, drag out, fist fight type of planning sessions we've had for the last four weeks. (Not really. Though the visual imagery of that scene does justice to the tenor of our "discussions".)

Counterarguments were raised in support of the motion to amend. Among these were: a) it's been a year now since we finished DoR with no serious interest from a publisher, b) too much of the existing story depends on the reader having read DR, ergo the book does not stand enough on its own merits, and c) none of the three of us were terribly excited about the story when we were done.

That last point was the most powerful reason against remaining in the status quo. How hard is it to sell your work to an agent or publisher when it doesn't light up your own eyes and make your own heart sing? The answer of course is buried in the stack of rejection letters I have in my file folder.

The possibility, nay, the STRONG possibility exists, that the reason we're not so terribly excited about Day of Reckoning has more to do with the number of times we've read, reread, edited, tweaked, shifted, reworded, corrected, and stared blankly at it during the last three years than it does the actual quality of the story. Doubtless, if this is the real case, when we finish rewriting Day of Reckoning, we'll still feel the same way about it.

The minutes show, nonetheless, that the motion eventually carried.

So, once we moved past the "Should we change?" question, we ran straight into "What do we change?"

There is no short answer to that one.

And I'm not sure I should open the curtain quite that wide.

- Number Four