Immo1 Update

I am very happy to announce that my first novel, Journey of Shadows, the first book in The Immortalis Trilogy, is finished. At least, my transcription is finished. If you recall, I printed my last draft out (draft #8 I think) and edited it by hand. I retyped the entire file since I made so many changes. The paper was a sea of red ink. In the middle of my transcription... or well, probably 1/3 of the way through more likely, my computer crashed. It took several agonizingly long weeks for me to get my files back. Anyways, I finished the transcription and it is now in the very capable hands of my editor, Steven. He has a lot of work to do, as I am notoriously impatient and tend to miss a lot of suffixes and/or make up words.

We are all very excited about the upcoming release of my novel, affectionately called Immo1 if you have read any other posts about it. A little background on Immo1... Immo1 started as a single line of thought while I lounged in the bathtub in September, 2009. That single line became a very rough story beginning. It was headed to my unfinished story pile when I shared it with Steven later that month. With his encouragement, I developed it a little more and it became the first draft of my prologue. That November, I finally did what I had said for years I wanted to do: I wrote a novel for National Novel Writing Month using the prologue as a stepping stone.

Since November 2009, Immo1 has undergone an incredible transformation through the love and dedication of Steven, his wife Rene, and my beta readers Raven and Philip. I fit in there somewhere but seriously, I know I would never have finished it without any of them. They all hate when I try to give them credit for Immo1 but it really didn't come alive to me until they read the early drafts and encouraged me to keep working on it. The best part was none of them gushed about how amazing it was and how it would win a Hugo some day. Okay, well, maybe Steven did... but he is biased. They gave real feedback: constructive criticism, suggestions, research information, etc. So they really are a huge part of this.

Since then, I have been fortunate enough to find an amazing artist to do the cover for Journey of Shadows and I was astonished with this man's professionalism and artistic vision. Alberto Ramirez Jr. is an incredibly talented man with a fantastic ability to take a text description and make it come alive in art. Here is the finished cover:

To me, it reminds me of the original Nancy Drew covers. I freaking love it. It is 100% what I envisioned when I told him "a Wizard of Oz-type dog with a human shadow sitting by a fire in the woods" and then some. Alberto is a professional and he takes pride in his work. I can only hope my novel is good enough to be represented by such an amazing piece of art.

Stay tuned to find out the exact date of release for Journey of Shadows. It is coming very soon! Yay! for a March release... quite a birthday present for me indeed. What do you think of the cover?!

Wrapping up my first novel

It has taken nearly 2 years for me to finish my first novel. It started as a single line of thought while I was relaxing in the bath in July, 2009. In October of that year, I wrote the prologue. Half a dozen versions later, it is still there, mostly intact. A very good friend of mine encouraged me to continue the story so I decided to try something I always wanted to try: National Novel Writing Month.

2/3's of the novel was written during NaNoWriMo. I had a goal and I chased it down. I managed to eek out 60,000 words in 30 days. I was astonished with my success. True, I didn't finish Immortalis 1 (affectionately nicknamed Immo1 so you know) in the 30 days, but I met the word goal of 50,000+ all the same. I put the story away for a while. I went back from time to time to add to my notes, but I mostly left it alone. In October of 2010, I realized that the NaNo was coming up again and made myself sit down and finish Immo1. I finished it two weeks later...or at least finished the first draft.

November 2010 came and went. I decided to put off editing Immo1 for the NaNo and started Immo2 for that year's competition. It is half finished now. I had even more fun writing Immo2 than I did writing Immo1. Continuing the adventure made it all exciting all over again! I'm in serious anticipation of NaNo2011 so that I can write the last part, Immo3. I know most writers don't choose a certain month to start their novels, but Immo and NaNo have become intertwined for me. It doesn't feel right to start the next novel before the competition. Besides, I have a YA urban fantasy waiting in the wings once I finish this trilogy that I haven't associated with NaNo.

Immo1 is now in the hands of some very brilliant folks. While they are doing a last read-through before the final editing, I am searching high and low for some cover art for Immo1. I know a lot of talented artists, but I know nothing about how to licence work of another for my benefit. I suppose a credit in the acknowledgements for the cover art would work beyond payment for the art? No idea. The waiting is killing me. I never imagined writing a book would take such a long time to see it to the end. Maybe that's why I have a dozen notebooks full of writing ideas that never ended up coming to fruition.