Worries, Truths, and Plans

I spent months editing The Seven Saviors and the whole time my stomach was a pit of worries. This is a very long book, was it good enough to keep a persons attention all the way through? Should I cut it down? What about the grammar and structure of each sentence; each paragraph? If I spent too long looking at the story line and perfecting what I thought it should be when I went back to read it I was in shock. Gak! You can't have a lazy or run on sentence like that!


For weeks I went back and forth within the story, walking away from it often and telling myself when I go back it will be easier and that I just needed to calm myself. It never helped, the worries never stopped; but I wanted to.

To be fair, I must say that I have in the last few months become a complete worrywart. Why, I haven't a clue, but I have been. I thought back to something that happened while I was on vacation. I joined my husband on the beach one evening. He said something at the time that didn't really sink in for a few days. When you stand there and look out into the ocean, the sound of it bigger than anything else, and you look out and see nothing but the water and curve of the world right in front of your eyes you realize two things. One is that you are really so small in the grand scale of things. Two was that how lucky we were to be part of something so big and grand, God took the time to create so many things and he took time to make sure I was a part of it all.

That first part was what took time to sink for me. Here I was acting like this worry was huge, weighing on my mind day and night to the point I had a hard time sleeping and honestly thinking of just quitting altogether. I'm just a little piece of this world and this worry was just a little part of my life, it didn't need to be so all consuming. I just needed to take a step back for a moment and do what I have done the last two novels, tell the story and worry about the other crap after the fact.
Finally I went through and looked at the story, not the grammar or other things like that. It is a good story, well at least I think it is... for my first go at a YA Fantasy/ Fairytale spin novel, maybe shooting for over 100,000 words was a bit much, but it was GOOD!!

I decided that what I needed was multiple layers of editors. This is classified as an EPIC novel, and when I put it out I want to go BIG with the release. I want, dare I say the word that I am not a fan of, a "perfect" epic YA novel. How will it get there? Work, plain and simple. I can weave a good story, I can write charters that a reader will connect with and grow to love. But, my own personal editing skills suck! I have never taken even one writing class past high school. (I did take a speaking class... guess whose speeches always went over the allotted time? Yep, it’s me! I can't keep things short and sweet, ha ha.)


I wanted a 15 + stop blog tour and new likes to my fan page waiting in anticipation for the release. I hoped to finally put the words Amazon Best Seller Author above my name with this one.
And how do us Indie author folk get that? Lots, and lots, of work – hard work that starts months in advance. I have not been putting in the work, not even close! Twitter - I hardly do it. Blogging - well I think we all can look back and see that I don't do that much at all. Interacting with other authors - on occasion, but I don't tell you all who's stories I read and love. If I’m not telling you all how much I love them, I can't be too shocked that other indie authors don’t know who I am. Where is the web site I wanted to do? What Author fairs have I been to this year? I have some serious work to do, and so does The Seven Saviors for that matter.

So, if you have not guessed by this point, TSS will not be released this summer – but quite simply it is not ready. When I hit publish I want to sit back and say, "They are going to love this!"
To get it, and myself there, things need to be stepped up a notch (or twelve).

Step one an editor (or four) that will point out everything and take no mercy on me. Is it going to cost me an arm and a leg? More than likely, lol.

Step two if I want to be better I need to go back to school. I want classes that will drill grammar and tips and tricks into my mind so that I will remember only them when I am 80 and can't remember anything else. I want to take classes that will help me write better romantic suspense novels, or a class that just concentrates on writing mystery or suspense. I don't want to quit and move on to something else. No, I want to be better, and better. I want to someday write books that make you more than ugly cry. Books that I edited and you don't see one stinking grammar mistake in! I already found a perfect online school just for authors, screenwriters, and play writes!

Step three happens while I am doing steps one and two. Get myself out there more Tweet and blog and post reviews on this blog, guest blog places and have guest blogs here also. I want to get in touch with my readers and find out what they want, what they love in a book. Let you all know me better, hell I'll invite everyone over for dinner and drinks, okay well maybe I won't be going that far but you get what I mean. I'm going to get that web site I have been wanting up and running.

Step four.... is kind of really step one now that I think about it because all this stuff I want to do apparently costs money (Who knew?!?!). So, I will be doing something simple, yet not because it is something new to me. I have always thought about being an independent consultant with one of these home party businesses. And there are only a few of them that I love and am obsessed with (Lia Sophia for one, I have a serious problem, lol.), and two of them are things that I have close friends that sell to all of us in our little group. But, there is one thing that I LOVE and none of my friends or any family members sell. IT WORKS (No joke, those crazy wrap things – they really, really work!! I love them!)
So that is where all the money I need is going to come from. I promise that I will not be flooding my blog, FB fan page, or twitter with IT WORKS stuff!!! This is the last you will hear of it, I promise! Though I must say if you get a chance to try one of their wraps you will not be disappointed!


In the mean time; I'm not going to stop writing new stuff, every free minute will be poured into more books for you all to enjoy in the future. I will be keeping you updated often and some of the classes I want to take are ones where I have to turn in stories that are around 20,000 words for teacher and class critics, so I'll have those to share also! I'm thinking of doing a story on the web site that will be released little by little for you all. I have a ton of ideas that I want to make happen and I hope that you will stick around so I can knock your socks off!!

Talk to you all again soon.
The not so perfect... but looking to get a little closer to it Author
~A