. . . which is called Terra, you will recall. Subject to further fiddling. Comments are welcome. You will notice that we’re looking for a parallel universe vibe here. What is that ray gun doing against the backdrop of a bas-relief from ancient Rome? Guess you’ll have to read the novel to find out.
I guess I’ll have to read it again to be sure. But it sure feels done at the moment.
My favorite quote about finishing a story goes something like: “You know you’re done when you go through it and take commas out, and then you go through it again and put the commas back in.” Wish I could remember who said it.
Here’s a nice review someone just posted on Amazon for my novel The Portal:
The story is riveting from beginning to end. Two preteens far from home but in fact not far but in a parallel universe is a fascinating concept all by itself. Throw in the time travel, dangerous situations, an array of interesting characters to interact with, and the emotions evoked as they experience privations and loss, and this becomes a captivating story you don’t want to put down until the very end. Recommended for teens and adults.
I couldn’t have said it better myself! I’ll probably post more of these when I get closer to publishing its somewhat long-awaited sequel.
I have finished the third draft of my novel. It’s now five thousand words longer and considerably better. I think I’m pretty close to being done. Here is how this works, in my experience:
Here’s an example of the mess. I came across this sentence the other morning: “After a few hours we stopped to eat and feed the horses.” Wait, what? How can you feed the horses after you have eaten them? I guess maybe that wasn’t what I had in mind.
Was I asleep when I wrote that sentence? Drunk? No, I was just working through the action and not paying enough attention to the style. So that sentence is fixed.
Now I need to read through the whole thing again. You know, just in case.
I forgot to mention that my novel Senator is currently on sale for the criminally low price of $0.99. Like, at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. And even GooglePlay. I have no idea how long the sale will last, so act quickly!
As always, if you enjoy the book, a good review is much appreciated.
I’ve begun the third draft of my novel, which so far has mainly involved fiddling with the second draft. I love fiddling! This means that I’m pretty close to where I want to end up, and I just need to make everything better — add details, .
There’s just one problem: this novel is the sequel to my novel The Portal, and it presumes that there will be a Book 3. If there isn’t, people will find the ending pretty darn unsatisfying. But I haven’t exactly plotted out Book 3 yet. Hey, I’ve been busy! So I’m worried that the action and characters of this unwritten book will require even more fiddling with Book 2.
So it looks like I need to do some plotting before I finish my novel. Luckily, I like plotting almost as much as I like fiddling.
Well, that took a while, during which posting here was light to nonexistent. The second draft comes out at about 80,000 words, which is about where I expected it to end up.
Much has changed throughout the book, although the basic structure has stayed the same. I’m hoping the final revisions we’ll go fairly quickly.
And I’m closing in on a cover design . . .
Shut up. Really, just shut up.
The plan was to get the sequel to The Portal done in 2015, but 2016 finds me about three-quarters of the way through the second draft. This isn’t like a George R.R. Martin delay, and I don’t have editors and publishers and translators and millions of readers waiting on me. It’s just a personal thing. But still.
What I don’t want to do (and I’m sure Martin doesn’t want to do) is to publish the thing before it’s ready. I can feel the temptation to declare victory and move on. But the list of things I want to tweak in the next draft is growing….
So I’ll get there–maybe by March. Maybe before George R.R. Martin.
Jane Austen’s novel Emma was published on this day in 1815, although this article says that the title page of the first edition gives a publication date of 1816.
The recent BBC ranking of British novels by non-English critics puts Emma at at #19, 8 ranks lower than Pride and Prejudice. The Guardian puts it at #9 among all English-language novels. No other Austen novels are on the list. Huh? (This is a pretty idiosyncratic list, actually.)
Here’s a very entertaining discussion of Emma from the BBC’s In Our Time podcast.
Time to add it to the to-be-reread list.
The BBC polled a bunch of non-British book reviewers and literary scholars to come up with their list. Note that it’s British novels only — so no James Joyce.
I’m a sucker for articles like this. The first thing I want to know is how many of these books I haven’t read — or, in this case, writers haven’t even heard of. I count 13 writers who are completely new to me, most of them from the 1980s on. I haven’t been keeping up! There are probably another 20 or so that I’ve known about forever but never read — Doris Lessing, John Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Paul Scott, Anthony Trollope, George Gissing . . .
Some more thoughts:
I need to read more novels.
Richard Bowker 