Visit Cerridwen Press today for a spotlight look at the first eleven titles in print, including terrific reads by Lora Leigh and Katherine Allred. And then drop into Cerridwen Chat for excerpts, contests, and your chance to win the Cerridwen paperback of your choice! A big thank you to Raelene Gorlinsky for providing the prizes.
In addition to the super-cool new bookmarks for The Gripping Beast the husband designed some new bookmarks for Love and Rockets, too. TGB’s are very monochrome and dramatic just like the cover, L&Rs are bright and colorful with a dash of pink. So there are new bookmarks and bookplates for anybody who wants ’em. I’ll update the FAQ with how to get ’em but pretty much it’s use the contact form to send in a request and I’ll mail them out.
New designs make me happy. Dunno why, but the things I get really happy and excited about seem to be new covers, bookmarks, my website template, all the visual design stuff. I am an eye candy slut, it seems. Good thing I married a design/web/photo guru. (Have I mentioned how much I love my new author photo, too?) I’m still waiting on the new cover for Yule Be Mine. Now that my EC/CP editor is back online I should have a release date and cover soon. That’ll delight my design lovin’ heart.
My Bermuda Triangle fears have been laid to rest. Due to brisk print sales, Love and Rockets has gone back for another (larger!) print run. Yay! So my author copies will soon be on the way and the here-then-gone status on the Ellora’s Cave ebay print listing will be resolved.
I came across an author’s two-part article on when to abandon a manuscript vs. when you shouldn’t, and it didn’t actually answer the question which of course made me think. When do you walk away? When is it worthwhile to keep going?
I don’t think this is a black and white kind of issue, but having salvaged all my early novels I can say why I did it. In spite of some flaws the idea itself was solid. And the characters had life. The problems were minor and fixable. Fixing them taught me a lot. Mostly that I never want to work that hard again so now I get it right the first time. Or at least I don’t repeat my mistakes. (Always room to make new ones…) But I had a solid idea to start with, a completed manuscript, lively characters, and flaws that were fixable.
I have one half-done abandoned manuscript that I will never finish. Why? Because the core idea doesn’t work for me. I was playing with the friends-to-lovers dynamic and realized that the only way that scenario would work for me would be a Young Adult romance. If I go back to this as a YA, I will keep the characters but set them back about 10 years in age and scrap every word written, starting over with the same idea and characters but writing it as a totally new project. (Anybody want a YA friends to lovers romantic comedy?)
I will say I think it’s generally a mistake to abandon any manuscript before you finish it unless you can see that either the core idea or your approach to it is so unworkable that you’re better off starting over. Every book reaches a stage where it looks impossible and abandoning it seems like the right decision but that’s just a stage. It passes. I think a lot of unfinished manuscripts that were workable or fixable get abandoned too early because the writer wasn’t prepared for the “it’s impossible, I should give up and start something better” stage. If nothing else, finishing is a huge learning experience. The temptation to abandon unfinished should almost always be resisted.
The manuscript that has been completed and then reworked to death, that’s a different situation. I did one major rewrite on each of my novels. One. If I were still rewriting the same book for the 6th time, it would be long past the point when I should have moved on to something else, IMO. I think one rewrite is reasonable, plus the inevitable edits. I think beyond that, you lose the thing that made the story speak to you in the first place.
So there’s my answer to the question, when you should save the book and when should you bury it. Your mileage may vary. Now back to finishing up the book I’ve just saved (in one major rewrite).
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