One Over X News

Another Update

Hey everyone and welcome back to me. I appreciate those who have been hanging with me, waiting for me to finish my spring project - that lingered into the summer. Thank you for the patience and for the emails of encouragement.

Anyway, I am sure I won't be doing daily posts here for the remainder of the summer. I really want to continue on into the second series and fine tune the Wolf storyline that is there. I must say that I am very impressed with what I have been able to do with the original series - even if I do say so myself. I need to go back and read everything, including the non-Wolf storylines. I know that it has been a while since I worked on any of that, except for Book 3 it has been about three years since I even read any of it. Of course I recently revised all of Book 1 and it is now how it should have been long ago before all the dissecting, editing, revising and such. The story flows. Despite how weird the premise, I think it is a very compelling story. Even if it never makes it into print, there will be a few copies floating around the world. Elana will receive one. My daughter Amanda is reading it for typos - between her other summer projects.

Amanda is involved in Summer of Fine Arts, which is being held at her school's theater. She has been studying stage craft and as a budding graphic artist she has been making posters and such to promote the shows at her high school. She is the stage manager for the SFA performance of Kiss Me Kate (based in Taming of the Shrew). I am rather proud of her for that accomplishment. Remember that she is only 16 years old.

The other day she floored me with a statement that came somewhat out of the blue. She told me that she and I are a lot alike. Now, as I have said before there is a good bit of me in each of my children. As a parent you hope that your offspring will get the best parts buit unfortunately it is one of those good-with-the-bad things. What irritates parents the most is that we see our own flaws in our children and we are frustrated that we cannot communicate the urgent need for them to correct our foibles that they have inherited whether through genetics, environment or our example.

Amanda is a creative person with a very self-directed mind. In that regard alone she is much like me. I am sure that she corollaries that I miss but be that as it may, I value her opinion in anything artistic. That is why I gave her the revised Book 1 to read.

I want Amanda to read the new and improved From The Inside To The Closer even before I send it out to Ela'na. Ela'na struggled through reading the first official version of the book. It was not her fault. It was a difficult read at best. I have been through all the reasons for how it emerged as it was but I have corrected those issues. I may have done this solely for Ela'na. I don't know. She has always had the faith in me and has inspired me to press onward. She has always been a good friend, one that is unafraid to be brutily honest.

At one time the wolf story that I wrote in the Summer of 2000 was merely 400 pages. I knew that in the process of integrating it into the series I embellished the story a bit - well, you know me I embellished it a lot actually. Well having completed the editing and revision of the Wolf plotline in the six books that make up One Over X, I decided to do two things. I copied everything that was related to the wolf storyline and pasted it into a new document. In 8.5" X 11" it was already 500 pages. Formatting it in 6"X 9" in 12pt, it tops out at 900 pages!

Unfortunately except for the Bible and maybe a couple of classics like Tolstoy's War and Peace and Delany's Dahlgren, 900+ page books aren't popular anywhere anymore. It was not my intention to make one mega-book, though. A few phone calls back I promised Ela'na that I was going to print out everything and send it to her. That way at least she would be able to read my stories whether anything ever became of them. Ela'na is like most people in that she does not like reading a book from a computer screen.

I was working with a way of creating readable chunks of the mega-book. As the text was inserted into the body of the entire series, it generally comprised about 160 to 194 pages to the point that each book had a natural break. I went with where the books were broken naturally and it produced five books that are between less than 200 pages - which according to my publisher is the perfect length for a novel these days.

Yeah the thought occurred to me somewhere along the line that the best way to get Ela'na readable chunks that were also consistent with the pacing of the original text was to follow the general guideline of no more than 200 pages.

I have been toying with the idea for more than a month now but I think I may actually explore it as I think the fantasy elements of One Over X are at this moment the strongest parts of the series. Despite the tie-ins to the main story of the series, the Wolf story does stand up well on its own. The work stands alone because they were originally written that way. So, for the first time I am seriously considering presenting it as a separate work. I would still want to release the series One Over X as it was always intended to be presented, but maybe the fantasy elements are what will drive the entire effort.

I am not committing to anything just yet but telling all of you that have been supportive that I have compiled some of the story in a new way. When I send it to Elana and get her feedback I will let everyone know. WARNING, I will not be doing that until the fall. I still have to go through the second series. I may actually crate one long storyline for the Wolf Story as it continues on from series one to series two in an almost fluid manner.

Peace.

E

posted by Unknown @ 11:53 AM