Drunken Owls and Other Delights

It's been a few weeks since my last fly-by post. June was busy with all sorts of things going on--a few weekend events, a half-week hanging out with the in-laws (who were checking out various Bay Area towns as they are contemplating moving this way at some point), a few concerts, and everything else in between. Of course there was also the fact that I've been rereading (and re-rereading) the three Trilogy books while working on Book 2's revision...that's been the bulk of my writing work for a few months now.

I'm hoping to get my schedule straight again this month, and I'm making good progress. Just a day or so behind on one or two things, but I can easily catch up. I also plan on reinstalling the Wacom tablet this weekend so I can continue with the art stuff as well. I do have some pictures I'd like to post, yet for some reason my Tumblr is reading them as upside-down when they're right side up in the pictures folder...will need to fix that before posting.

Anyhoo!

So over the past few weeks I sat down with my Nook and read all three books in the trilogy, back-to-back. Partly this was done to compare the finished revision to Book 1 against the unrevised Books 2 and 3, and thus get an idea what needs to be fixed and/or changed. [The other reason was to get an idea of the overall flow of the entire trilogy, and to see if I'd indeed wrapped up everything as well as I could. I'm proud to say that it looks a lot better than I'd expected.] One interesting thing is how I'd always touted Book 2 as my favorite to write as it was the smoothest and quickest. However, looking over it with new (and somewhat more professional) eyes, I'm seeing issues that need fixing. Nothing horrible that kills the book, mind you, more like a handful of thin spots and a few passages that could be updated and/or rewritten.

The biggest surprise, however, was rereading Book 3--the once-reviled last book that dogged me for the longest time, the one that I eventually stopped writing for close to five years? The one that in a previous LJ post I'd said it felt like there was no Act I? Yeah, that one.

Reading it in the context of the other two books, it's actually tighter and stronger in plot than I remember. Sure, there are a lot of weak points in it, but nothing I can't fix. Point being--reading the full Book 3 again (and reading it straight through for the first time after FINALLY finishing it in 2010), I was floored by the fact that it's a hell of a lot BETTER than I previously thought it was. Even the opening makes more sense and feels like an Act I than I previously remember it being. I think part of it is because it's the most physical of the three books--Book 1 is spiritual, Book 2 is emotional, and Book 3 is the follow-through, the action result of the previous two. The action starts right off in this one, because at this point, it has to.

That's another thing that surprised me upon reading all three in one go: I'd planned on having the trilogy work as a specific arch, a nearly complete evolution of the characters, their lives and their surroundings, from one end to the other. The trilogy starts as a straight-ahead detective novel but within a chapter or so it's obvious that's not its true direction (I did that on purpose to underline just how deep this story is about to affect the main characters). By the time we hit the last page of Book 3, everyone's irrevocably changed in one way or another, affected by the events of the very first chapter in Book 1. In the end, I think I pulled it off a hell of a lot better than I'd expected.

One last thing about Book 3--given that the last dozen or so chapters were written after a dry spell of about four years, I can definitely see a change in the pacing and a bit in the writing. It's not garishly obvious, but again, it's nothing I can't fix. For the most part, I think posting the chapters on the Eden Cycle LJ and then picking up the chapters right after that helped me get in the mindframe and the flow, so the end result isn't all that bad. I'm actually looking forward to revising this one now.


That said...I've also been thinking about how I'll finally release the trilogy. I'll have a separate post on that later so this post won't turn into yet another novel-sized diatribe. Short version is that I've been thinking more and more about the DIY/self-pub end of it. I've got a few writer friends out there who have already done so, and I've also been thinking a lot about how other media has done it (in particular the whole music end with Bandcamp and elsewhere, and Lulu.com with books). More on that in my next post!


Hope everyone has a lovely Friday and a relaxing weekend! :D