Battling Doubts

I wrapped up books one and two in the Merry and Bright Handcrafted Mystery Series (former series title was the Twas the Murder Before Christmas). Last week, I turned in the final edits for Not A Creature Was Stirring and the next stage for that book is release day. And this week, sent in the manuscript for book 2 Be Good for Goodness Sake. The last month (okay, actually 2) had been a little hectic with juggling both of the deadlines and even having to push hem back a bit. I was happy with book two but do foresee some edits in the story line. There was one new secondary character who I think might have inserted themselves a little too much into the story. I'll see what my editor says. Sometimes, I'm not quite the best judge of my own story.

The title of this blog post is battling doubts, and it's not the book I just turned in that's the battle field of my doubts, though I am having some for it. I think it's natural for writers to not be sure of a story once it leaves our hands/computers. Or, at least I know I always do. The doubt that has me at a standstill is over whether or not to republish (self-publish) my inspirational romantic suspense series. I have reedited the first book, am working on the second book, and designed covers for all five of the books. Yet, now that the first book is formatted and I'm about to press the publish button, I am frozen.

I love the series. The characters. Why I wrote it. It means a lot to me. But, I'm scared to take that final step and get them back out into the world. I'm not sure if it's because it wasn't well-received (as in sales wise) and I'm afraid that I'll be disappointed yet again. Or, the fact that releasing them is giving up my "hopes and dreams" on what could happen and discovering the "what is" for the books. Honestly, it's a little scary.

The New Beginnings series are romantic suspense stories about self-rescuing princesses and tarnished knights out to set the world right. I adore all the books I have written, but have to say this series holds a special place in my heart. These books are about pushing past and through the traumas in life that want to keep us captive, want to pull us down into despair and keep us there. It's about clinging to hope for a better future even though it seems life wants to break you. About knowing when to let go and when to continue fighting.

And in writing that out, I realize it's not time to "let go" but to push through my insecurities. I don't want to let this series go. And to battle these "demons" a little bit, I'm going to be brave and share the cover and the copy. Because then it'll be back out there. It'll be real. And the first step is always the hardest...next up will be uploading the formatted to Amazon.

Skip-tracer Renee Stratford-Knight’s life plan changed upon her sister’s murder. Instead of using her skills to find people, Renee opened New Beginnings a firm specializing in “vanishing” abused women. Now her ex-husband –and former business partner – Jonas Knight reenters her life asking about her most vulnerable client.

In order to uncover the secret a teenager girl disappeared to keep, and a killer wants silenced, Jonas and Renee must struggle through distrust and the pain of their pasts to work together to save the life of a teenage girl – and their own.

The Perfect Ending--I hope.

This is the closest I've been to a deadline without having a complete first draft done, and I'm not liking it. I've come to discover I don't work very well when there's a loud clock ticking in my head, but I really hate to ask for more time. It makes me feel like I'm failing. Professionals don't ask for more time. And, I already received an extension because I was struggling a bit with editing one book, writing another one, and trying to market...and the marketing has really gone downhill as there just wasn't enough time to get it all done. The first book in the Merry and Bright Handcrafted Mystery Series (series title changed from Twas the Murder Before Christmas), was originally scheduled for March and we moved it to January. At that time, I had everything under control and then my well-laid plans changed. The biggest being I knew that I needed to start over with book 2 as there were unresolved life (not mystery) issues from the first book readers needed answers to. So, I started a new book 2.

And now, the endings--yes I have written more than one--just haven't been right. The first ending had a darker tone than the rest of the book. It didn't fit. I went back to the beginning, made some changes to the first half of the story, and saw where the ending needed to go. Or so I thought. Again, didn't work. Merry's personality seemed to change. She sounded too much like another character of mine and not Merry. Once again, I scraped the ending, returned to the beginning, smoothed out the plot and transitions in the other chapters.

Onto another ending...and the book stalled. I have finally caught onto the fact that when I stall it's because something isn't working in a previous chapter. I went back to the beginning and edited again. That's when I discovered that I loved the first 80% of the book, but the story once again took on a slightly different tone when one of the secondary characters was on screen. Toward the end of the book, whenever this one character interacted with the heroine it threw off the story so I had to downplay this character.

I'm now on my fourth, fifth, possibly sixth ending as I've lost count and hope this one sticks. I have kept the other endings...they might work in another book. 

Name Change

Remembering a character's name can be difficult, especially when they started off the story with one name, and you realize that it needs to changed. I've thought of this character as one name since he popped into the story and I'm having a hard time not using the original name. The reason I changed it was there would be too many characters that had the letter W as either their first or last name. Unfortunately, the original name fit him perfectly, according to my muse, and I'm having to keep reminding myself of his new name. Just a few minutes ago, I resorted to typing in all caps at the beginning of chapters his name is Norman not Walter.

Hopefully, that will be the last reminder I need and I won't have to do use the find and replace function again. Now, I have to also go back through the book and make sure there weren't any places where replacing Walter with Norman created new words. I've changed characters names before when the name didn't match the character, or I got stuck on a letter (I seem to do that a lot) but none have caused me as much trouble as this one. Maybe, I need to think of another name to change it to since Norman isn't sticking in my head.

Some Days the Words Won't Come

It seems I've spent of the day sitting at my desk and staring at the computer trying to figure out what to write for the blog post and also for my next work in progress: Book 2 in the Twas the Murder Before Christmas series. I just can't seem to think of what I want or need to say. I usually can do one or the other, blog or story write, but today the words are stuck in a place in my head I can't quite reach.

I don't know if it's because I have no title for the book (titles usually reflect the theme or an element of the story I'm working on) which means while I know the key elements the driving force for the story still hasn't shown itself, and the fact I switched which book I was writing because of deadline dates.

As for blogging, it's hard to know what I want to share when I know I need to get going on a book. I can't focus on what I want to talk about as my mind keeps flipping to what else I should be doing. Deadlines can be helpful but other times throw a wrench into what were well laid plans. Back to the work in progress and trying to figure out what is at the heart of the mystery my heroine needs to solve.