I have some updates!

Hello!

I haven’t shared anything the past few weeks as there really wasn’t much to share, this week there is.

First, I have finalized the front cover with my cover artist! I thought the process of finding an artist, figuring out what I wanted and getting it done would take forever, but I lucked out and found a great artist that is so easy to work with and was available. We will have to revisit it to finalize the wrap once I finish writing the book so I know the dimensions. And have a blurb.

I also got back my first round of feedback by way of my developmental editor and it is so helpful. I am full of ideas for how to make character arcs stronger, clarify world building (the thing I knew I needed outside help to see, I just know too much to know when I didn’t share something), strengthen my writing style and a million other little things.

While I have been awaiting feedback, I have also been scribbling out scenes and ideas for the second book and that document is over 16k words now and I think I am closing in on the basic structure enough that I might be able to start drafting it while I wait to get the rest of my alpha feedback in.

I would absolutely love to have a clear idea of when I will be finalizing book 1 as well as a beginning of the first draft for book 2 by the end of the year. That feels doable.

Having the cover is adding extra motivation to get it done because I don’t want to share it ridiculously early but also it’s so pretty and I want to share it.

In the mean time, here’s a little snippet from my book 2 scribbles:

[Context: This is from a scene where Zuriel is with Pyre who plays the memory for him. I have to redact what the memory was and what triggered it for spoilers.]

A smile tugged at his lips at the memory.

The smile slipped somewhat as the sight before him shifted and he could see it play out before him from the dragon’s point of view.

“Don’t.” He breathed, unable to tear his eyes away despite the pain the sight sent radiating through his chest.

The scene vanished but the ache remained.

“I’m sorry. It brings me comfort to picture Corban. [redacted], too. I forget it does not do the same for you.”

Zuriel pushed his hands into his hair, tugging at the roots as he closed his eyes and breathed through the pain. “It’s alright. It just…hurts.”

Thanks for reading!

Blessings,

Michelle R Bowen

Quick update

While I am waiting to get feedback on book 1, I have been working on getting the plot together for the second book.

I am using a little different technique than I have before, paying more attention to who needs to be included and what their arc will be to avoid some of the pitfalls I have had in the past, so hopefully it will come together faster and stronger, though I am still very much a discovery writer and won’t really know all the twists and turns until I write them. Already the story has evolved from the early scribbles I wrote out for it.

It has been so much fun to work with all these different ideas and characters. I am so excited to share this story.

A little scribble:

“I’m going to go for a flight. Do you want to join me?”

Halvar sat up. “Yes and no.” He grinned at Zuriel.

Zuriel felt his own mouth tick up. “Wuss.”

“Oh come on!” Halvar said as he stood. “There isn’t even a saddle. If he wanted to shake me off, he’d have no problem. We weren’t made to fly anyway.”

Zuriel smiled as they started out of the hall side by side. “If we aren’t meant to fly, why do dragons agree to fly us around?”

Halvar scrunched his face. “They’re arrogant buggers. They’re showing off.” He snapped his fingers, “That’s it, they are showing off their chosen like a pedigree dog.”

Zuriel laughed at that, grateful for his brother’s company.

Thanks for reading!

-Michelle R Bowen

And we’re onto professional editing

I have finished revisions and sent the manuscript off to my developmental editor.

I have never made it this far into the process before and I am very excited. I also get to work with the editor I had been hoping to work with since I found out she offered editing.

I also have a few alpha readers set up since I am not sure what feedback I need exactly, but I do know I have rewritten this story too many times to know if it is actually working this time.

I hope you all have a great 4th of July!

-Michelle R. Bowen

Struggling a little this week

I really wanted to be done with this pass by now, but I am still on page 254 out of 304.

Hopefully it wont take too long to get through the last fifty pages, then I am going to go back and do some edits on chapter one since I got a sample edit for that one and I am excited to make some changes there.

I haven’t been wanting to work in Vale this past few days though. Probably because I have been wanting to listen to My Epic (A band) and that is coded in my mind as Hallendrest music which is a different WIP. So my brain has been more in Hallendrest than in Vale.

But, I fully intend to be ready to send it off for Developmental edits in July, and that is still very doable.

Also, slightly funny story. So, I realized this week that I spelled “Dueling” wrong. It was watching sword fighting videos that got me thinking about dueling and what the word means. When I “made” the term, I was thinking of the word “dual”. The idea was combining the idea of duality with a changeling. I was aiming for Dualing, though I opted for the spelling: Dualling to keep the base Dual and the suffix -ling. I have also learned it is a British term for expanding a road from one lane to two, so that works well since it’s an alternation that allows the altered to hold more magic.

Language is so fun. I eat this kind of stuff up even if I fail epically at it at times.

Here is a little snippet I enjoyed on this pass:

“I am old, Zuriel. I have forgotten more lifetimes than you can fathom. I have access to knowledge that no one knows about, and I have studied these things longer than my memory extends. I promise you, Zuriel, if there was another way to save Vale, I would do it. I would have done it long ago.”

Thanks for reading!

Blessings,

Michelle R Bowen

Almost to the next stage

I am on page 195 of 305. I am very pleased with how the story is shaping up and I am super excited to get feedback to see what I have missed.

The fact that I have rewritten this story makes it harder for me to see what is or isn’t working as I have a bunch of extra facts in my head.

I have commissioned my cover artist and I am very excited about that. I really thought it would take forever to find an artist and I would be in a wait list but it looks like I am just going to have a beautiful cover to sit on for months while I get the book finished.

A little snippet: (Cyrus is sending Zuriel off with his sword for the first time)

“Keep it close and ready.” Cyrus paused until Zuriel nodded. “It’s sharpened.” He raised his eyebrows and Zuriel bit his lips, fighting the urge to laugh. “Don’t stab, slash or otherwise maim anyone on accident, alright?”

Thanks for reading!

-Michelle R Bowen

On Track

I am at page 105 out of 307 on my second round of revisions. I have found a few scenes that needed to be reworked slightly. There is a part coming up that feels fairly weak to me and I am going to try to strengthen it when I get there. So far I think I am on track to finish by the end of June which will let me send off for Developmental edits in July.

A lot of my energy has been going into finding my team for this book. Looking up and speaking with editors and artists for the polishing and cover design.

After working on this story for so long, it is still surreal to be making actual steps toward publishing. This isn’t really what I was expecting to use my business degree for. Haha!

A little snippet of the guys during training:

“This is Hadrian, a fire sorcerer, and this is Conleth,” Fintan ruffled the hair of the nearest sorcerer who scowled at him for the gesture as he shoved away. “Our little water sorc.”

“I’d like to see you handle water the way I do.” Conleth shot back as he ran his hands through his hair.

“Settle down, Connie,” he said and moved on before the sorcerer could retort. “Halvar, there’s a bench there. Cyrus might have had a touch of a point.” He scrunched his face. “You look like a ghost.”

“I’m fine.” He huffed but went and settled in on the bench.

Thanks for reading!

-Michelle R Bowen

Second round of revisions have begun

I am working through a second round of revisions. I am 32/308 pages. It’s mostly cleaning up little details left over from shifting things around (Aila rode a dragon for the first time three different places for example).

It’s going fairly quickly. I am hoping to complete it this month and maybe send it to my few alpha readers a little early.

I am beyond excited.

I have also set up my account on Instagram that will be dedicated to my writing with little snippets and images. If you want to follow there you can. @michelle.r.bowen

Here’s a little snippet for funzies:

Zuriel ran his hands through his hair and let out a huff. “So, what? We go back? Find others? What do we do?” He dropped his hands.

Halvar took a deep breath and let it out slowly through his nose. “I don’t know. There is probably someone still around here, but there is no telling what they’ll make of us.” He looked at Zuriel. “We might not be welcome here.”

“Of course we’re not welcome here. If I was welcome here, I wouldn’t have been hidden away on a different planet and lied to my whole life.” Growing exasperated he waved his hand at the death around them. “There is nothing welcoming about this place. Is it worth fixing?”

If you give up, he wins.

A fire spread through her core; an anger. This was her home; she had no other. Nydia was a refuge, a safe place to recover, but this, Vale, was home. It was where she was born, where she and Leora had laughed and played as children. Where her parents died and her beloved sister were buried.

“Yes.” The strength of her voice surprised her. She looked at Zuriel who met her gaze without flinching. “It’s worth fixing.”

He held her gaze for a long moment, then he nodded. “Then let’s fix it.”

Thanks for reading!

Blessings,

Michelle R Bowen

First Round of Revisions Complete

After about three months, I have finished my first rounds of revisions. Yay!

I was a little surprised as I thought I was going to need to rewrite a few of the scenes near the end, and they do need a bit of polish, but big picture, they work. The pacing isn’t horrible. The sequence of events makes sense as far as I can tell.

I am currently rereading the draft with the latest revisions to see how I feel about them, how they work. There was a plot line in the second part (yes, I realized it’s in two parts) that I was iffy about so I want to confirm that it does work with the way I restructured it.

I expect this to take a couple weeks. In the mean time I am selecting a couple Alpha readers just because it is a rather complex story and I have been very close to it for a very long time and I just want to get an outside opinion or two about whether or not it actually works.

I am making progress designing graphics to use on my website and dedicated social media pages and I hope to launch that soonish. I might use the time the draft is with alpha readers to get that done and ready to go.

Either that or I’ll start drafting book 2. I have a few scenes scribbled out for it already, but the ideas are still rather vague. I want to have an outline, however skeletal done for book 2 before I finalize book 1 as I left a few strands in there that I need to pick up in book 2 or it’s just going to be messy. But, given how the ending happened, I think I will have plenty of room to weave them in.

Lots of progress. Thank you all so much for reading these little updates. I can’t tell you how encouraging it is to see that there are people subscribed and regularly liking these updates. I appreciate you so much.

In celebration, here’s a little excerpt that I enjoyed on the reread:

“No.” Cyrus said before any greetings could be exchanged, his hard gaze locked on Halvar who was much less jovial now than he had been at breakfast, and somehow, even more pale.

“Rafael said-”

“You look half dead, go sit somewhere.” He shook his head and turned away from the naim as if dismissing him. Halvar glared at him but made no move to leave.

“Morning.” Fintan said and clasped Aaron’s arm in greeting. “We thought figuring out what you can do with sorcerer magic would be best done first thing before you spend yourself too much.” He threw a glance at Cyrus who nodded and moved away to a group of naims who seemed to be waiting for him. Fintan grinned and leaned toward Aaron. “That man did not want to give you up this morning.” He chuckled and stood back. “Come on, we have a set up over here.”

Aaron and Halvar followed the sorcerer to another corner of the yard where two other sorcerers stood.

“This is Hadrian, a fire sorcerer, and this is Conleth,” Fintan ruffled the hair of the nearest sorcerer who scowled at him for the gesture as he shoved away. “Our little water sorcerer.”

“I’d like to see you handle water the way I do.” The sorcerer shot back as he ran his hands through his hair.

“I’m fine.” He huffed and settled in on the bench.

Thanks for reading!

-Michelle R Bowen

Actual progress!

So, this week has been a little interesting. As I was reading through and revising scenes, deciding which to cut and which to rewrite, a came up to part of the story where I did a time jump and discovered that without the extra plots crowding the story, the weakness of the pacing was painfully obvious.

That was a little discouraging because it meant I had to go back and write the part of the story that I skipped over.

Well, I managed it much faster than I expected after mapping out all the POVs and timeline I saw that the amount of time didn’t even make sense.

In short, I bridged the part of the story to the rest of it in a way that I believe fixes the pacing error. It will require some additional changes in later scenes since I erased a few weeks of timeline. But for now, I am confident that I am still on track to have this ready for a few Alpha readers by August.

As of now I am working around page 191 of 311, which is, again, not perfectly accurate because I am polishing some scenes I wrote in a separate doc before pasting it into the draft. But, I am basically two-thirds of the way through the draft revisions. Yay!

Since I am getting close to starting the work that will end with a published book, I am considering my marketing strategy and I will be sharing here first when I get more dedicated socials in place. (Newsletter, dedicated Instragram, etc.)

Thanks so much for reading!

Here’s a little snippet:

When they’d moved far enough from the others, Aaron sat down and when Pyre tugged at his mind, he followed.

Opening his eyes, he found himself standing on their island beside Pyre and Corban.

“Like this?” Corban asked.

Aaron flinched back. “Oh, that’s weird.”

The naim laughed. “I’m using him as an avatar. I can’t exactly picture myself speaking, I don’t have a voice, but I remember his.”

A wave of sorrow rushed through him, and he regretted his anger at the dragon for simply existing as he was made to exist.

“I’m sorry, Pyre. It wasn’t fair to be angry with you.”

“You are under an incredible strain. I feel your struggle.” The naim shrugged. “This could be useful. I hadn’t considered it before. Perhaps because Corban was more accustomed to telepathic communication. Its still new to you.”

“I’ll say.”

“Cyrus is a brutal trainer.” Corban growled.

Aaron chuckled at that. “Yeah, well, this whole situation I’m in is brutal.” All the humor left his being as the reality settled back in, no longer displaced by amplified emotions. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“You’ve only just begun, Zuriel. None of us really know what you are truly capable of.” Corban grinned at him. “I’d like to find out.”

Making good progress

I made it through the section I had to alter and put back into the story. I am now on page 154 of 311. Just about half way through (depending on how much rewriting happens in the next section).

I have another section that probably wont need too much rewriting before I get to the messy bit that I know isn’t settled just yet, especially with the plot lines and POVs I cut. Hopefully I can get this pass done by June or July and get another pass in before my August goal of getting either some alpha readers or a developmental editor.

Here’s a snippet:

“Okay,” he took the wooden sword from each of them. “Now run.”

Pushing past the initial distaste at the idea, Aaron ran with Halvar close behind him.

As much sense as it makes to have me train with you, I would like to remind Cyrus that I am not actually the Dueling.

Aaron laughed. Oh, poor you.

I should have stayed in better shape.

Round is a shape.

Halvar surged forward and shoved him. “I am not round.”

Aaron laughed harder, grateful to be lost in the moment, joking around with his best friend. It made the strangeness of everything fade.

Thanks for reading!