So, I now have a third — that’s right, THIRD — major re-edit of Book 1 of my series…

LOL. It feels like I’ll never stop working on that pesky first pancake!

“Hart & Cole” is going mobile…

I recently signed an exclusive contract with Saga, an Indian publishing company, for my entire series to be converted into an episodic format for their upcoming mobile fiction app.

That’s right… you heard me… exclusive. That means *GULP* taking it off of Amazon, for a specific period. (I’ll let you know how that goes!)

But this entire transition onto the app meant that the Saga folks did a deep-dive into my series and gave some good suggestions (mainly — to chop out some bits) so I took it to heart and did a significant overhaul.

Mind you, I’m an awesome editor in my own right… I do, after all, make a living at this… but you can’t, you just CAN’T edit yourself!

The Art of the Edit

In the case of “Climbing The Walls“, it meant entire flashback scenes and minor plot points disappeared entirely, a few scenes were rewritten to cover up those gaps, and then minor snipping to cut every stray word.

Sounds crazy that I still had so much to cut, but it was a cathartic process to get the book down to a now much less unwieldy tome. At around 110,000 words, it’s definitely — and finally — in its right word count bracket.

Litrejections say 80,000-110,000 and JerichoWriters say 75,000-110,000 for women’s fiction, Reedsy suggests 80,000-110,000 for commercial and literary fiction, so I’m just squeezing in under the limit there!

My first draft of this novel was over 15 years ago, so it’s understandable that I’ve grown a lot as a writer since. The problem is that I was stuck in my head with who my characters were, and tried to get it all in. With considerable distance, and fresh editorial eyes on this masterpiece of mine, it’s finally where it should be.

A Fresh New Look… coming soon

Another piece of good news (to me) is that my entire series will get new covers.

I love my covers, but I have to admit that they may not be on-genre. Purple and black suggest erotica (apparently) as I learnt! And while there are sexy elements to my stories, that’s not the main theme.

I have no idea what the new covers will all look like, but I’m looking forward to a change.

The first one is done and it is a distinct shift from the past!

Just like the words themselves, I’m stuck in my own head with the cover. Even when I updated the cover of Book 1, it looked similar!

I have to let go and let someone else make some decisions, for a change.

The inner writer-girl control freak

I’m excited about my new partnership, as I know it’ll reach markets I have no hope of reaching on my own with my limited finances.

But I’m also scared of giving up control.

Being a writer is about playing God with a universe you create.

Tacking on a publishing house’s name to my own production company is, in a word… frightening!

But I’m game.

I’m also emotionally exhausted with marketing my own books, and for this year to date, I have made most of my income from NON-novel-writing work! I’ve taken on proofing/editing, content copywriting, beta reading, critiquing, even doing a book synopsis for a fellow author — among a slew of editorial work and freelance clients.

So screaming my book from the mountaintops… yeah, I just don’t have the energy or time to do it anymore. I need to let someone else take the reins — at least, for a little bit, while I focus on the financial stuff through other means. Hopefully I can use some of that to feed back into my own promotions eventually, but for now I’m willing to just sit and wait and see how things go with Saga.

Wish me luck!