One Over X News

Rationale

Mia culpa! It has been a week since the Green Day concert. Except that I have endured every agonizing moment of the past week, it does seem like the concert was only yesterday. I have been that busy.

Working a fulltime job and putting in 60 or more hours a week is tough enough. That it is a retail job with almost constant customer contact is often a double edged sword. The general public lends variety to the job but so many people also lead to a good deal of frustration. I try to do what is right for every customer. Sometimes I can't.

Besides my 'day' job, I write. I write sometimes four or five hours after coming home from work. Usually I edit during the evening hours, though. The best time for me to write seems to be in the early morning while I am waiting to take my daughter to school or shortly thereafter. On the days that I go into work at noon, I can get several good hours of quite time to write.

I am adhering to something of a schedule, anyway.

For the past month or so I have been revising Book 1-2e, as the original Book 1 had been modified enough to be considered a second edition. Well, the revision of the more recent version is even more distinct. This project has become a greatly modified and significantly altered work. If it ever finds its way into print it will have a starburst shouting that it contains "New Material!"

It has some new material. It has a good deal of amplification and elaboration. Some portions were deleted. A couple of new things were added, new in that I had removed them previously not that I wrote them fresh.

If I were to work on Book 1 for the next ten years to the exclusion of anything else, it would improve. I think that at this point any such improvement would be marginal and only in pursuit of a level of near perfection that I am unlikely to ever achieve in letters. Book 1-1e was good. It had mistakes, typos and confusing passages. It had longwinded narratives and overall it was confusing for about the first 100 pages. Somewhere around the 'chapter' titled 'Other', the book settled down and began to be a somewhat more readable test.

I suppose I could rehash the why and wherefore aspects of the first 100 pages. It was better to revisit them with a sharp blade to be used for surgical removal of the unnecessary. Of the infamous 53 pages of narrative, thirty of them have been removed completely. The remaining pages have been revised heavily, some dialogue added at times, further clarification or amplification included.

Having said all that, the book is still a challenge for the reader. I did not water down the language. I made the sentence structure flow a little better, smoothing out the rough spots. I have done this in response to the constructive criticism I have received from my friends and some strangers. I think I have produce a more readable and comprehensible book. The story was always compelling if you could get past the structure of the text. It was always a pretty good story. The story has not changed much.

I would challenge everyone that has read Book 1-1e to read the second edition. I still, as always seek feedback. It is a different book. The feel of it has not changed but the flow is very different. Having had the experience of not only completing the first six books but also the next three and then writing a prequel to the first series in the process, I have developed a much more free writing style.

One of the people that commented on Book 2 mentioned how 'refreshingly different' it felt, even from the outset. I have told some of you that the first couple of parts the involve Brent and Lana were written toward the end of the revision process. I was actually working on Book 1 of Series 2 by then - even though I really had not yet completed the last half of Book 6 from the first series. If you followed all that then maybe you will understand this: The first fifty or so pages of Book 2 were written by someone that have emerged after the publication of Book 1 and agonizing over the effort of getting the first book into print.

I have also told many of you here and there along the way that I wrote the base material for the first couple of sections of Book 2 almost as a train of thought exercise, seven hours mostly confined to a chair in my bedroom. It went through numerous revisions and such but I assure you, one and all that I wrote the material about Brent and Lana in one sitting. It may have been one of the more prolific writing sessions of my career. I don't know. There have been others involving the Wolf material that begins in earnest with Book 2 and continues throughout both series one and two as well as the prequel to the first series.

I know that someone will want to know my immediate plans now that I have revised Book 1 so extensively. I plan to promote Book 1 and 2 locally - meaning on the east coast of central Florida. I want to do a couple of readings, signings or whatever and I am working on getting that scheduled with a couple of places. I also plan to approach several places that cater more to the people that read science fiction and fantasy than general book stores. For right or wrong there is a stigma regarding sci-fi. Whenever I tell someone that I write they are all about supporting my efforts until they learn that I write sci-fi - then suddenly it is as if I have farted in public. What I write is not all sci-fi but it is 'tainted' so I will embrace the genre even if other sci-fi authors may consider my presence amongst them a bit bizarre. I feel that I could not be in any better company. The most creative people that I have ever met are those who read and/or write science fiction and fantasy. If I obtain any 'fleas' from bedding with fellow travelers, then so be it.

From The Inside To The Closer, Book 1 of the One Over X series is, in my humble estimation one of the first books that draws together sci-fi, fantasy and neo-realism. The only book that surpasses it in its ability to draw from often divergent genres is Book 2, A Game of Hangman.

I plan to revise Spectre of Dammerwald, the novel that I wrote last June-July. As it is a more recent work, and considering that I have revised it once already, I hope and even expect that this will be more of a read through than a full-scale, edit-every-friggin'-sentence exercise. I am not sure what I will do with the end result; I need to consult with my publisher. Not much has happened with my books lately and for that I take some blame. I cannot afford the time away from my day job to promote them and get them some exposure. I have some new ideas though and I plan to pursue them into the summer and fall. I may have the publicity angle in control now.

At any rate I am the sort of fellow that honors friendships and respects obligations. My present publisher has been very supportive in many ways but the resources for a full-scale launch have always been lacking. I am entertaining the idea of submitting 'Spectre of Dammerald' to another publisher just to test the waters. I expect rejection - that is the norm anyway. Despite my own feeling that even as if the book is one of the best things I have ever written, it would be a contribution from an unknown author and as the industry now stands it would be summarily rejected. On the off-chance that anyone actually reads it, though...I will try.

E

posted by Unknown @ 7:47 PM