Feels Like We’re Overdue for a Blog

It has been quite a while since posting any sort of update about my next project, titled Medusa, or Men Entombed in Winter.

My last blog on the subject was posted May 10th and titled On First Drafts. It was nothing but an update about how the first draft of the novel was complete and what that meant for the future.

It’s now exactly two months later. So where are we now?

Well, that first draft was evolved into a second draft, which came in right around 81K words (or 320 pages). As soon as the second draft was complete, I reached out to my editor, Jenna Love Schrader, and let her know I had a new project for her to take a look at.

When I use that word “editor”, I want to be clear that an editor does more than proofread. Really, think of Jenna like a very first reader, who reads the manuscript, gives comments on the draft, and provides a 15 page breakdown of character, plot, theme, what is working well and what isn’t. Jenna’s been in the publishing industry for over 15 years, and has seen a lot of drafts in her career.

After Jenna read Whalers for the first time, my revisions based on her notes added almost 20K words to the manuscript.

Last night, Jenna gave me her editorial assessment of Medusa.

Much of it is specific to the book and hard to grasp without context, so I’m not going to share any of her feedback here, but I did tweet out last night what she said to me when she sent it.

But let me tell you, this book is amazing! Everything is outstanding! Technically you don’t have to implement my suggestions as it’s in such great shape. Anything I put in is only to enhance or to play up the symbolism, or to give the readers some clarity on a character’s thoughts/motivations. But this is such an entertaining book, and so well written You should be so proud to put this out there….I so enjoyed this book and the story. It’s interesting because it’s equally as interesting for men as it is for women, which is hard to do. It’s kind of neutral that way, which is how really good literary fiction is ideally!

Her comments did nothing but affirm, at least in my mind, what I’ve been feeling about this book since I started working on it. Medusa, or Men Entombed in Winter has something special about it. Something that I think readers are going to flock to, tell their friends about, and think about for a long time after reading.

Lastly, if you are interested in receiving updates or following along with this writing journey of mine, you can do a few things to really help me out.

1. Subscribe to my website to be notified every time I post a blog.
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3. Tell your friends!

I’m excited to share more, but now it’s editing time for me. I’ve got 16 pages worth of notes to go through to make this manuscript even better, and make that third draft the one that really shines. Once that’s done, I’ll be looking for beta readers to take a look at the draft and give their comments, so let me know if you’d like to be one of those people.

Love you guys.