Paksworld

I shipped Horngard off to my agent again on Tuesday, before leaving for the dentist’s quarterly exam/cleaning/discussion, etc.    What’s changed? you ask.   Well, the beginning, the end, some stuff in the middle, and about 7000 words have left the pages.  It’s down to just *under* 175,000 words.  No, it’s not too “thin.”   Part of what came out were simple repeats, one of them a page and a half long!!  Several people in the writing group had seen and commented on some-to-most of it.  Their comments generally made sense and offered a valuable perspective (from people who had not read the earlier books) on how such readers might see the book if reading it “cold.”

The multiple revisions have not made the book “beige” or “muddled” but have actually (esp. this last) cleaned off some grime, some scratches, some mistakes that should’ve disappeared two (at least) revisions ago but I still couldn’t see them.  Now I can.  Even after sending it off I thought “Wait–did I fix that other bit?” and looked it up and lo! it was still there.   (Character goes to sleep feeling esp. good in two places in the book….should happen only once per book since the second time is at a significant place.)  Character arcs were largely tidied up and given better “pointing.”     When I read it through the last time, I felt that the current of the story, the pull of it,  was definitely there.  Always a reason to turn the page, without the slack water effect that had bothered my agent before.  Yes, as the writer I know stuff the reader doesn’t, but what I feel (I hope correctly) is that my sense of flow is coming back now as I work on this one.  And then the next.    I also think the short things I’ve done have helped with that, since a piece of shorter fiction *cannot* have a lack of pull anywhere in it.

And there’s been movement on Remnant Population, which I’m excited about.   Nothing’s solid yet, but there is interest, and a small amount of money following.  So far, no option has led to anything more (sometimes an option renewal) but options are a sign that possibilities do exist.