Update on THE LIGHTLESS and 2nd Draft of VINE VEIN

7-17-24

THE LIGHTLESS manuscript has been revised and completed for more than a month now, and I was able to get the word count down to 115k, which is still a little over the industry norm for debut Fantasy novels, but for now I have cut out all I can. This includes a large majority of flashback scenes, extra characters, and small plot details. I have taken into consideration everything I learned from the 2024 TN Writing Workshop, including criticisms and suggestions from an author and multiple literary agents. I cannot express enough how invaluable an experience it was to attend that event, and to be able to see my work with so many new perspectives during and afterward. For now I will let the story drift from my mind, and take a break from querying it. I also might have my editor take another look at the newest version of the manuscript sometime this year. However, I no longer am so certain that it can and needs to be the first book I put out in the world, so I am content to let it sit undisturbed for a while.

I have been going through my 2nd Draft of VINE VEIN for some time now, after getting back the editorial assessment on it from my editor. Taking some of his advice, for now I have split the manuscript into three novels, since the page count together was nearly a thousand. I’ve worked through the first novel already, and I’m very pleased with the edits so far, and it is sitting around 108k words at the moment. The second novel is at 85k words right now, though I’ve only just begun its edits, and I've outlined what can be added as I go through it in order to get that up a few thousand words. The third novel sits at the lowest word count, and I am going to be interweaving some of the narrative and characters from the follow-up novel into it, giving it a ‘three book’ structure.

This has by far been the hardest undertaking in my writing career, as I try to balance each novels’ promises and payoffs, and endings, so that they still read through satisfactorily. While not intended as a trilogy, as I wrote this as a single manuscript, I have found that the longer I continue to work on these novels in their split up state, the more I am beginning to enjoy where each novel begins and leaves off.

Going into August 2024, I will continue working on the edits to the latter half of VINE VEIN’s story, but I also have many other projects currently in development, as well as on my mind to begin development on. I still have yet to dive back into my novella for a second draft, and I have multiple manuscripts that I’ve begun that have been demanding my attention again.

I know this has been my first update in a minute, but I hope to keep this up to date more often from now on—now that I have dove into VINE VEIN as much as I have been able to. Beginning that editing process was a very daunting premise, and it did for some time intimidate me into not jumping right into it. But, I am happy to report that fear has since dissipated, and not only am I becoming more confident in my editing skills, but I am revisiting this story for the first time since writing it last year, and I am remembering just how fun a story it was to write. I hope it’s just as much fun for you to read one day!

—JMB