T he next book in the Vampiris Series is The Moons of Bornak, which are the adventures of the Elf Zyre and the Vampire Estienne within the Reveal. I am still considering the approach of this story and have made several false starts. It is an adventure that tempers the Elf and brings reality to the Vampire. I am a bit daunted by all the information I have and what should be discarded or included.
Procrastination appears to be the bane of every author, but I have an excellent reason! I was given a copy of Umberto Eco’s The Prague Cemetery. So I keep leaving my promoting duties and wandering off to sneak a quick read!
Getting back to refining Florian.
The chase for fame for me is a double edged sword. The attention I want is not for personal notice as I would hate for anyone to recognise me in the street. I value the anonymity of life, however, I do want the world to know of my work and that it is out there.
This means having to promote and to me this is far more difficult than actually writing a book–even a series! While I am enjoying sales, they are not of the quantity to change my life and I am well aware they could dry up at any time. Resting on my laurels at this time would appear to be both foolish and a waste of time so I have taken to approaching book bloggers.
The dreaded review is something I have been trying to ignore since being published since I am well aware my fantasy is not mainstream and therefore will not please everyone. My hope is that it can please enough people to garner some decent reviews. It has been pointed out by others that reviews are very important in places like Amazon for sales.
I am not so worried about the romance as it is a general romantic adventure and as such will be reviewed more according to taste than failure of story. I have tried to keep the story believable and not to preposterous. Unfortunately, I find many romantic books to have contrived scenes and I can understand their lure because they forward the romance easily. Instead, I tried and hopefully succeeded in creating a logical and fun adventure.
So now I wait and see who responds, who ignores and more importantly what the reviews will say. I might as well start the next book in the series as there a few stories that need tending.
Not Really Mr. Smith is pending at Amazon and up at Smashwords. I am very pleased with this cover. Now to get the Vampire formatted to follow!
For me editing starts as a mechanical process. At least for the Vampiris Series as there is are histories attached to each chapter. I stopped the histories after part two believing that the audience would want to read only the story in the final part of the book. When I sent it to Tom for a look he vetoed the idea. He felt it looked like I had given up and had nothing more to say. Far from it, I could rave on for a few years, after all I did create the damn world! Right now I am in the middle of the Vampire Story and this is the most difficult one as Vampires are attached to a very particular and unforgiving genre, so I have to get my Gothic right!
So now I have to look over and organise all the histories for each book, some cross over because not all readers will read all books so I have tried to incorporate the relevant ones to each story. After doing that I then have to go through each chapter and history to ensure the storyline makes sense. Now you would think after two edits that would be a pointless task but no, there are always things that slip through the cracks due to my mind filling in the blanks. Every time I do an edit I have to approach the story as a new reader so I am constantly asking myself how does the reader know this? Did I tell them or am I assuming facts not related.I envy those who can edit with carefree abandon, I have very little confidence in this area.
Finally there is the line editing of the story itself where I try to ride the grammar pony without falling off. This will take weeks and weeks of work due to the gaps between each edit. To keep fresh eyes then I need to be refreshed and I do that by exposure to other work, mine and others. Editing is painful for me as I tend to second guess myself and when it comes to vampires their victims are not the only ones bleeding for them.
