Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Heyyy Beta, Beta, Beta...

The 3rd draft is done. Finally.

Hestea Hammerblood is at last taking shape and I'm laying the whole novel out *gulp* for some scrutinizing eyes: my beta readers. They are seven hapless individuals whom I will be ever grateful for their time and energy. Thank you, my beta readers. Thank you.

I've finally given the book a true title: The Veil of a Warrior, and it is weighing in at about 105,000 words. It is a struggle against a dark force, with an emphasis on characters. I believe strongly in how much a character can pull you through a book of their own accord. As much as I want to just cram the story full of magic and strange creations, I have held myself back and kept the focus (hopefully) on Hestea and a select few that drive this story forward.

This will be book 1 of 4. Book 2 is somewhere between a third to a half of the way done, and the last two are outlined in various levels of detail. I will be sharing a couple more chapters of the story soon for anyone interested in reading them on the blog. If all goes well, perhaps soon after the beta readers give me their feedback, I may send it around and look for an agent and publisher. That also means I need to start doing some research. Oh boy... where do I start?

This critique process will be interesting. I've only gone through this once before and it was for a short story. I know there will be some feedback that will be hard to take. That's without question. I will try to not take it personal, and just try to learn. As many advise, I will be keeping myself busy with other projects while I wait for everyone's reply.

I'm also trying to mentally gear myself up for NaNoWriMo next month. I think I know which story I want to work on for the month. I really don't have the time, but then the whole purpose of Nano is to produce words and to do so quickly. So with that in mind it should be doable.

So, are you participating in NaNoWriMo next month? If so, are you ready?

4 comments:

  1. It is a struggle against a dark force, with an emphasis on characters.

    Sounds like my own WiP, White Pickups. Good luck with the beta.

    If NaNoWriMo was any month other than the last three of the year, I'd take a stab at it. But November is just not conducive for disappearing Between the day job, Thanksgiving, a birthday (mine), yard work, and other incidentals, I'd have maybe half the month to do the full 50K, roughly 3200 words/day. On really good days, I can throw down that much verbiage in 2 hours, but every day for two weeks? Not likely.

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  2. I know, it's going to be hell, and I probably won't make it. But I want to try and the idea is to just spew forth words with delirious abandon.

    Well, dark forces and strong characters...thus are good stories made. White Pickups? Are those the good guys? I suppose the Black Pickups are the evil ones? ;-)

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  3. Heh, the pickups are actually the bad guys. I'm serializing the 1.5th draft on my blog. I haven't actually finished the thing yet, but I know how it ends — and I'm well into the second book. Posting it gives me an incentive to keep working at it.

    Sometimes I think I should have stuck to short stories. :D

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  4. Wow, 56+ episodes. How large is the project clocking in at?

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Thanks for reading, now tell me what you think.