A Little Magic Would Be Handy


Wanna See Me Turn a Book into a Diptych? Just tap the magic wand on the cover three times....and presto chango! Gahhh...I wish it were that easy!

If I had realized when I decided that the opening chapters of my novel needed a little fleshing out, that I was committing myself to writing a novel length prequel that would change much of the landscape for the main novel (thereby adding the prospect of another draft to that one), I probably wouldn’t have embarked on it.

After all, Avenging Glory was pretty much complete. I just intended to add a wee bit more colour, depth and detail to part one – because I was setting up one of my major characters and had just breezed through his potentially fascinating backstory with an “and then this happened” approach. And he deserved SO much more.

 As I worked on it, I kept finding valid rationales for dramatizing bits of this backstory and adding new scenes and characters, and before I knew it, I’d added several chapters. And then more, and a bit more...and damn! A year after starting that project – I am approaching the 65,000 word mark of draft 2 of the prequel. And I still have a ways to go!

 I haven’t decided yet if I’m happy about the way things are working out – but I do feel  that this book needed to be written. Avenging Glory wouldn’t make as much sense or be as much fun without it.  This way, I can publish it as a diptych, possibly giving away Book 1 (tentatively titled The Human Template) to get people to buy Avenging Glory – which is a great promotional idea. And it will likely be easier to sell a publisher on a completed two book series with books of 80K and 110K than it would be to sell a 160K multi-genre first novel. Which is where it sat last May. So this process definitely has an upside.

The downside? I am not a fast writer. My process requires four to five drafts before the work is ready to put out into the world. I cannot get away with shortcuts. If I leave something in third draft state, readers glom onto it pretty quickly. And I still have 10-15K words to the end of Human Template. Most of those will be first and second draft words. So, two more months, to the end of draft four if I push myself to my limits.

But perhaps what scares me the most is finding some new way to procrastinate once I get there. To my dear partner, Laura, who asks every time I get out of household chores because I’m immersed in a marathon writing session, “Is it done yet?” – I promise. Not yet honey, but I’m so close I can taste it. I’ve been tasting it for a year now, and like a fine wine, it’s just getting more and more complex.

Just a few more months...and I will have finished two books instead of one. The Arboreal World Diptych – an epic worth waiting for. Although maybe I should expand this...

No, no, just kidding. Really.

 Photo courtesy of Pexels / Nitin Aria
Get the scoop on my new novel, The Human Template at https://dalelsproule.com.
I write literature of the fantastic. My short story collection, Psychedelia Gothique is mostly psychological horror. My just released novel, The Human Template is available through most online book retailers - and book two of the diptych, The Carnivorous Forest will appear in 2021. https://www.dalelsproule.com As a book reviewer I have written for Rue Morgue Magazine and AE Science Fiction. As a visual artist, I have illustrated books and magazines and have carved numerous sculptures out of stone.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review of C.J. Lavigne's In Veritas

Image
I am not a particularly fast reader, but I did spend an unprecedented amount of time immersed in C.J. Lavigne’s debut novel, In Veritas . It is a story ostensibly about communication in which the major character, named Verity, is pretty much unable to communicate in the usual manner. The crossed-wires in her brain give her a severe case of synesthesia which lock her into her own somewhat non-sensical world and contributed strongly to making her an outcast from a very young age. – with the added complication that people have an impossible time lying in her presence. She escapes from incarceration in a mental health facility with Jacob, a wealthy young man who seems to be somewhere in the autistic spectrum. Having been cheated out of control of his family fortune, he does pretty well on the stipend he receives. Jacob and Verity live together in an affectionate - although emotionally distant and seemingly platonic -  relationship where he switches career paths every five minutes and
Read more

Becoming a Legend in my Own Mind - and why that might be good enough

Over 50 published short stories and no novel. What’s that about? I’ve been writing seriously since I was about 15. For a few years, in the late 80s and early 90s, I was fairly prolific, publishing upwards of eight stories in one year. I spent a long time pushing the envelope, trying to be edgy – and I even succeeded on occassion. One in three stories I’ve written over my lifetime was good enough to be selected to appear in my collection, Psychedelia Gothique , which contained 17 stories – several of which had been nominated for Aurora Awards, Pushcart Prizes and the like. A number of my stories appeared in small scale “Best of” anthologies – with pieces in Wild Things Live There ( The Best of Northern Frights ), The Best of Eotu Magazine , and the Sign of the Times 20 Year Anthology . A couple of my pieces appeared in newsstand magazines and in the same table of contents with some of my favourite authors. Writers I admire reviewed several of my stories very favourably. A magazine
Read more

The Book After Which Everything is Different

Image
I’ve never called myself a Chuck Palahniuk fan. I’ve been aware of him only since the  Fight Club  movie and have read only  Invisible Monsters  and  Fight Club . I’ve never been to one of his readings, though they seem to be pretty amazing and I’ll probably catch one if I get a chance. While looking him up online, I came upon a piece of his writing advice on Litreactor about avoiding the use of thought verbs. It was genius. It spoke directly to me and my worst tendencies as a writer like no teacher or article has before – and it came to me at exactly the right time. IE: while I’m on the fourth draft of the novel and that level of editing is at its easiest (which is a bit like saying it’s easiest jumping the Grand Canyon on a motorcycle when the sun isn’t directly in your eyes). When I discovered that Palahniuk had written an entire book on writing, it seemed like a good investment, even if all I was doing by buying it was paying him properly for the thought verb essay. I am del
Read more