Bewildered Release Party, Day 3: Interview with Ev Bishop, Editor Extraordinaire!

Welcome to day three of the Bewildered Release Tour! Today we go into Liz Shulte's Bat Country to hear from Ev Bishop, the editor of Bewildered. As luck would have it, Ev is also the editor for Liz Shulte's Mystery and Paranormal Romance novels, of which I have read several and loved them all!

While you're there, enter the giveaway! Here's what's up for grabs on my BEWILDERED RELEASE GIVEAWAY:
--1 signed Hardcopy of Bewildered
--1 signed Paperback copy of Bewildered
--1 paperback of Heir to the Lamp by Michelle Lowery Combs
--1 Art Print by Angie Kwon (illustrator)
--1 print of Bewildered's Cover Art
--5 Bewildered Bookmarks
--and 2 Bewildered Bookplates!

It's so easy to enter! Just visit the blog host and click, click, click! Spread the word!

DON'T FORGET: Through March 22, 2014, use coupon code US73N at Smashwords.com to pickup the eBook copy of Bewildered for $1 off ($2.99 sale price!)

My Rough Draft is Crappier Than Yours!

So you get to the end of your rough draft! Yay! Congratulations! Sure, it's rough- I wonder if that's how it got its name...yes. It is because rough drafts are supposed to stink like last month's dirty diapers. Thank goodness mine doesn't disappoint.

Okay fine. So maybe I'm being overly critical (or dare I say it...dramatic?!) but I haven't been able to take my eyes off of it since I completed it and since it's been hard to concentrate on anything else (see date of last blog post for confirmation), and the more I look at it the more I feel like taking a red pen and marking out every. single. word.

Then I "talk" to my Facebook writer's group- a collection of people from whom I receive a huge amount of support (which is something fantastic indeed since a lot of online writer's groups post a lot of self-promotion and not a lot of writer-to-writer talk)- and I read about what to do next, and I'm told by anyone who has walked this path to step away from it for a good long while- 4 to 6 weeks to be exact- which may seem like a small task, even a blessing, but when you are wholly vested in the 60,000+ words of your story and you have a date in mind when you want to see it on your shelf (summer 2013), you don't have time to dilly dally with letting your story marinate and your eyes see it fresh. Fresh. I can look at it with fresh eyes after only 4 days- just watch me. Oh wait, go back to previous text...It stinks. Mark out every word. Start all over again.

Seriously, people, at this point, I've totally rewritten about 2,000 words with a totally new voice, a new story line in mind, and you guessed it- a new working title. Know another way to describe this...yeah- writing a NEW BOOK. I don't know if that is covered under the guise of editing but I'm about to find out.

If you clicked on this post hoping to get a tidbit of advice from an old pro- back up in your browser and try the next article- this girl is as green as green bowl full of green peas in the green grass covered in moldy green mint cookies. Green, green, green. However, if you clicked on this hoping to commiserate, laugh at a completely disillusioned writer, or perhaps feel a little better that you only want to mark out every. other. word, then let's hug and have a good laugh because that's what I'm here for.

If you think that this is a sign of me giving up. Forget it. Not happening. If you think that this is the sign of me reading any and everything regarding editing, rewriting, and bugging every person I know that has published a book for sage-like advice, then ding-ding! you're totally on target. (And no, I am not feeling aggressive, just passionately convincing myself that failure is not an option.)

Get your red pens ready...in 4 to 6 weeks.

Uh-huh- I've cartooned myself editing without a shirt on. I work from home, aren't you glad?