Only two weeks passed between the first word of "Summoning Sin" and sending the whole manuscript into Evernight. It was a story that just clicked and flowed and finished itself. I had fun writing it and I remember the energy of that story fondly. The story that just worked and was, all of a sudden, done. The promo for that one felt like a natural extension of writing process. "One Night Contract" had only been out for a week or so by the time "Summoning Sin" was finished and it was selling faster than any book I'd ever published, and I was already starting on "The Promise of Steel".
Things are totally and completely different for this new release.
Things are totally and completely different for this new release.
"We Wander Far From Home" is my first novel length story (other than a few 100K plus fanfics floating around in cyberspace) and it has taken me longer to write than anything, ever.
Originally it was a document called "Fun West" on my old green PC and I was rushing to finish it in time to submit it to Amber Quill's "How the West Was Fun" anthology call. Those submissions were due August of 2010 and a family vacation caused me to miss the deadline.
Annoyed with myself, and certain cousins, and certain bars, I tossed "Fun West" into a folder and largely forgot about it. "The Promise of Silk" my first published book, came out in August of 2011. The high from that did drive me to pull "Fun West" out of the folder it had languished in for years, and I wrote three or four more chapters of it. That's when the character of Clarence showed up, and the excitement of his creation carried the book through a lot of edits, but did not bring it all the way to an ending. I gave up on it again, and published "Cherry Dreams" and "In Varying States of Disgrace".
Originally it was a document called "Fun West" on my old green PC and I was rushing to finish it in time to submit it to Amber Quill's "How the West Was Fun" anthology call. Those submissions were due August of 2010 and a family vacation caused me to miss the deadline.
Annoyed with myself, and certain cousins, and certain bars, I tossed "Fun West" into a folder and largely forgot about it. "The Promise of Silk" my first published book, came out in August of 2011. The high from that did drive me to pull "Fun West" out of the folder it had languished in for years, and I wrote three or four more chapters of it. That's when the character of Clarence showed up, and the excitement of his creation carried the book through a lot of edits, but did not bring it all the way to an ending. I gave up on it again, and published "Cherry Dreams" and "In Varying States of Disgrace".
I'll admit that I got a little discouraged with e-publishing for a while. To this day, "In Varying States of Disgrace" is my favorite piece , and it didn't do anywhere near as well as I had hoped. "One Night Contract" is really the book that got my head back in the game. It was light and fun and popular. I liked writing it and people seemed to like reading it. It started a flurry of writing that lasted for months. "Summoning Sin" was done only weeks later, and that same rush spiraled into "The Promise of Steel" , "The Promise of Lace" and "Sun Goes Down".
During this manic writing period, between every book, I'd add a chapter to what I now just thought of as "The Western". The book that refused to develop a title, or an ending. After "Sun Goes Down" I submitted the first book in a series set in the 1960's and got my first rejection. I believe the technical term for my reaction to this would be "A Hissy Fit". I was having a bad time in my personal life and my absolute hatred for my job was reaching a peak. I swore I was done with erotica, and started working on a few mainstream novels.
But erotica sucked me back in. I churned out a lot of half drafts, letting the muse make me hop between projects and working up a bunch of documents that wound up in the same folder as "The Western". Beginnings and climaxes laying around in a way that didn't demand completion as much as passive aggressively nag about it.
"Oh no. You go do laundry. I'll just wait here without a resolution. It's fine.".
"I mean. You could write me a better comeback in this argument and move on to the making up scene, but you just seem so busy watching 30 Rock and drinking wine, so whatever.".
"I know you're job hunting, but I just don't think that this long description of a sexual position is realistic. Or interesting. Or well paced. What'chya gonna do about it?"
Finally, "January Thaw" and "The Out Of Towner" broke out of the folder, caught my attention and found themselves edited and packed off for submission.
But erotica sucked me back in. I churned out a lot of half drafts, letting the muse make me hop between projects and working up a bunch of documents that wound up in the same folder as "The Western". Beginnings and climaxes laying around in a way that didn't demand completion as much as passive aggressively nag about it.
"Oh no. You go do laundry. I'll just wait here without a resolution. It's fine.".
"I mean. You could write me a better comeback in this argument and move on to the making up scene, but you just seem so busy watching 30 Rock and drinking wine, so whatever.".
"I know you're job hunting, but I just don't think that this long description of a sexual position is realistic. Or interesting. Or well paced. What'chya gonna do about it?"
Finally, "January Thaw" and "The Out Of Towner" broke out of the folder, caught my attention and found themselves edited and packed off for submission.
I continued to tinker with The Western, and suddenly, in January, the damn thing was done. I set it aside, back in it's folder, just in case I was wrong and started tinkering with other things before coming back to it and realizing that it was actually, finally, fucking done. I hesitantly started editing, poking and prodding and adjusting, to find that, instead of the partial thing it had been for five years, I was now polishing a whole, rather than trying to make parts hold together and it could stand up to tearing and patching, rewriting and glueing back together.
But it still didn't have a title. Everything I have ever written has either had at least a working title before it had a first chapter, and a final title before it was even a third done, but this weird outlier- The Western- had refused until the very end. The last line showed up in one of the edits, and the title fell out. I caught it and slapped it onto the top of the manuscript before it got away and finally- FUCKING FINALLY- "We Wander Far From Home" was done.
It's journeyed from that old green PC to the new Macbook, between folders labeled "Abandoned Projects", "Old Drafts", and "Long Term Projects" to the "Completed Manuscripts" folder and in a few days is going to join the expanding "Published Works Folder".
And stay there.