Hello everyone! It’s been a productive couple of months for me, hence why my update is so late. To summarise:

• I finished editing Part 3
• I received feedback from my first round of beta readers
• I edited the entire novel again, making over 1000 changes

I’m preparing to send my manuscript to a fresh set of beta readers within the next few weeks. Hopefully there will be fewer things to fix this time!

Most of the changes I made were small, such as rewording sentences for maximum clarity and deleting unnecessary words (adverbs, crutch words, excessive gestures/facial expressions). Other changes were more significant—cutting subplots, expanding on key scenes, and ensuring character consistency. Would the average reader care about any of these changes? Probably not. But I care, and that’s reason enough to make them.

To Split or Not to Split: Redux

I’ve come up with some more solutions to the splitting issue I talked about in my last post. I’ve done some research into publishers and agents, and my current plan is to leave the book as-is. There are a significant number who either:

• Accept longer manuscripts around 170k; or
• Accept shorter manuscripts around 50k

That means I can (theoretically) submit the full manuscript to publishers in the first group and the manuscript for Part 1 to publishers in the second group. Each “part” has it’s own complete story arc, so it could work as a trilogy. With that in mind, I think it would be premature to conduct major surgery on a novel that might not need it. I’ll reassess the situation as it progresses.

The One-Day Draft

I took a day off from my main WIP yesterday to start the first draft of a new book. That was the idea, anyway. Instead of merely starting the draft, I ended up writing the whole thing. It’s only about 15k words (more of a detailed outline than anything else), but I’m pleased with how things are shaping up.

That’s all the news I have for now, but I’m sure I’ll have something more interesting to report next month. Stay tuned!

Sincerely,

J. R. Schuyler