Much like the ruins of New Lilinar, my story has crumbled.

With less than a month until publication, I have discovered too many issues with Prince of the Ruined Land. My final flaw which brought the whole thing down was realizing that Steigan had been bitten by gargaxes three times and no one says anything about it for about 20 pages.

Talk about dropping the urgency behind it.

That was after I had discovered that the main climax scene comes and I really felt like the story should end, but I was wondering why it continued on for five more chapters. Unfortunately, they were five chapters that really needed to follow for the story to work.

Again, a lack of urgency had dropped the ball.

In general, these are things that are really easy to fix. I’d already done that in the beginning of the book several months ago.

But then I was trying to think of another way to increase the urgency other than the way I’d been thinking, just in case I’d missed something, and was explaining the story to my son. He kept giving me funny looks. Then one of his questions really blew things apart. I realized I had way too many scenes that detracted from the story and really needed cut.

So I spent five hours figuring out which scenes could be cut and stripping them out. Now I have new transitions that need to be written. Plus an important scene to figure out how to put into the book. I’m at a point now where I’m trying to see if it’s needed right now in this book. Parts of it have never fit. I’m not even sure I can make them fit with what I’m going to try to do in the next book in the series.

Poor Steigan. He keeps trying to be a bad boy and he never gets to succeed.

Now, no worries. The ebook is still available for pre-order and will be released on April 17, 2018 as promised. I do also plan to have pre-order setup for the book soon, but I’m going to wait just a little bit in case I don’t have enough time to order a proof copy of the book as I had planned. This might delay the print version of the book by a couple weeks. Trying not to have that delay, but I will also take the necessary time to make a good story. A little give, a little take.

If this quick retake of the novel doesn’t work, I do still have the original and can go back to it in a flash. However, I suspect that the story will be so much better when I’m done. I trust the process and since it kept telling me that it wasn’t right, I was bound to find flaws that would strength the breach of me knowing it needed more work. A deadline, a very firm one now, will assure that I stay focused on getting it done. There’s some significant patchwork to be done, so I’ll be getting words in.

Also on the Sacred Knight front, I have finished recording Quest for the Three Books. I wish that was the first time I’d said that, but I think it’s about the third. Practice makes perfect, as does a good mic and a professional setup. I listened to a section of the second book that I had recorded some time ago and let me tell you: the difference between what I was doing then (and I thought it sounded good) and what I’m doing now are two totally different levels. I’m really glad I did a few other projects before continuing on this book.

I also splurged a bit on my audio setup last week. I bought another microphone stand, a new shock mount because the one I’m using now is broken, and a new stand for my iphone. Since I bought a shroud for my mic, I haven’t felt comfortable in my booth; it just feels crowded. A 3 1/2′ x 3 1/2′ booth is small enough without feeling claustrophobic in it. Now, I know that logically adding another mic stand to my booth isn’t going to give me more space, but if it gives me a way to shroud my mic and still read my copy without feeling as I do now, it’ll be good. I must remember to take before and after pictures.

I have my son home for spring break this week, so I’m not sure how much I’ll get done. Fortunately, he’ll have his brother around to entertain him. (grin) I get the fun of sitting back listening to them play video games together. I really have been blessed with two good children who have always been friends with each other and who help me out greatly.

I haven’t yet even begun to look at what I’ll be posting for Onesong this week either. I hope its something good. (grin)

Since I’m trying something new with Prince of the Ruined Land in order to figure out what needs fixed, I figure that will also be helpful in Onesong when I get around to patching it up. Strangely enough, the list of chapters for Prince now looks nearly as bad as the one for Onesong which I’ve shown on other posts. Maybe I’ll post what they both currently look like here later in the week. I think it’s quite funny how they both look similar. But that might just be humor that only a writer could get.

Fiction words written last week: 3.098 words

Blogs/Newsletter articles/non-fiction written:  2,808 words

Writing month to date total:  15,776 words — my writing streak for hitting the weekly goal is now at 11 weeks. I do want to point out that I wrote ever day last week, I just didn’t hit my goal every day. I still got the weekly word count though. I suspect it might be like this for a while as I get Prince reshaped, then I read through stories to remember where I was at in them. I really ought to figure out a way for me to keep track. I’ve seen the process other writers use, but I’ve never found a system that works for me. I think I just need to tame my writer child to only work on one story at a time. Dang that sounds boring!

Writing year to date total: 82,544 words

Drawing/painting last week: I spent about 1 and a half hours working on Weblinks.

Audio: I spent 6 hours recording and editing audio.