Things I did while writing The Soul’s Mark: FOUND

Here is a list of the things that happened while I was writing my upcoming novel, The Soul’s Mark: FOUND:

· Completed an outline, or half of one. Then I got impatient and wrote my first draft.

· The first draft sucked. I ripped it up into millions of tiny little pieces. Then I went back to the drawing board.

· I wrote a complete outline. Then I re-wrote it. I put my scenes on index cards, spread them out across my living room floor and put them together. I shuffled them up and put them together again. I did this over and over until I was happy with the storyline and I had each scene and their place in the story memorized.

· Spent weeks and weeks researching vampires, soulmates, souls…

· I interviewed all my characters, asking them their most embarrassing stories, their favorite colors, what they looked like…

· I wrote the second draft then again ripped it up and went back to the drawing board.

· I added scenes took away scenes and tweaked the outline then I gave it to a friend to critique.

· I crashed my computer (luckily I backed everything up).

· Took a break from writing the book and wrote fun scenes with my characters.

· Sent some fun scenes to my editor and checked my emails at least 50 times a day waiting to see what he thought.

· I thought about throwing my computer out the window. I was sure something was wrong with it and that’s why I hadn’t heard back from my editor.

· 5 days later I got a response from my editor—he was excited!

· I wrote my third draft and finally came up with The Soul’s Mark: FOUND for the title.

· Then I changed all my characters names and re-interviewed them.

· Wrote my fourth draft and gave it to some friends for feedback.

· For two weeks I stood over their shoulders hounding for feedback and I’m sure I drove them crazy.

· I got the feedback and went back to my outline. I moved scenes, deleted scenes, added scenes and thought… something is missing…

· I wrote a prologue and I realized what was missing and then added the new idea. I tweaked the story and finished my fifth draft and then sent it back out for feedback.

· While I waited I read, read, read. I re-read some of my favorite books and picked up some new ones.

· One by one the reviews started coming in and they were good… and then it hit me… I didn’t want to finish the story. So I re-wrote sections and then changed them back. I stalled for another three weeks and then finally I accepted that it was actually finished and… I sent it to my editor.

· For the first two days I checked my emails at least 200 times even though I knew he would take at least a week to get back to me.

· Two weeks later I got the edits and dove in, fixing areas that needed work, reading his comments, sticking my nose up at them and then deciding he was right.

· And now, here we are. The Soul’s Mark: FOUND is finished and the days are counting down for its release.

Now it’s time for the fun to start again… stay tuned for my upcoming projects.