The Publishing Journey Thus Far
The Cover Art for Fury’s Fate
Olivia Beckett has lived through thousands of lifetimes, dispatching miscreant supernatural creatures alongside her sisters as the mythological trio of Furies. Memories of her past lives begin to appear and haunt her, and she starts questioning everything she thought she knew about her life and her duty. In the midst of a brewing war between the factions of Creatures, Olivia goes against all the rules and falls in love with a human, only to realize he may be connected to her mysterious past. Can she have it all, or will she have to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to stop the war?
I dreamed of this—working with a publisher, having an editor, reviewing cover art, even doing line editing. I know it’s not for everyone, the things that I do. But for me, working with Wild Ink Publishing has been an absolute dream come true. Let me give you an update about how things have been going since I received my offer of publication last fall.
Developmental Edits
When I submitted my manuscript to Wild Ink, my story was sitting around 78,000 words. Fury’s Fate is bigger than anything I’ve ever written. Even my thesis for my M.A. wasn’t this long. And while my editor, Brittany, was amazing at letting me know what was working, there was a glaring issue with my story: the average word count for an urban/contemporary fantasy novel is 92,000 words. Cool. Cool, cool, cool.
So we’re just gonna add 14k more words, even though it truly feels as if I have shared every word I have to give. Awesome.
It is important to point out that Brittany did not just send me off with the goal of arbitrarily adding 14,000 words to a story. Not at all. She pointed out that the ending—always my weakest section because I’m just so glad to be at the end that I sort of blow through it—was a bit anti-climactic. It needed development. There also wasn’t yet a completely clear motivation for my main character.
It all still felt pretty daunting, though. I can’t lie. I just sort of stared at the draft for a few months.
Slowly, surely, I began to find my way back into the story. I was able to get back into Olivia’s consciousness and figure out ways to build a stronger relationship between her and the reader. I saw moments she experienced that I hadn’t seen before. And I took the time to create a stronger world for her—filling it out with even more characters and rethinking the government structure.
I won’t bore you with the details of everything I did, but it all came together in what felt like a whirlwind. When I was down to the last 8k words, I spent a long weekend writing. I wrote 5k in one day—that’s ~2k more than I’ve ever written in one go. But when I finished, I felt finished. I felt so much better about the draft and literally couldn't wait to send it off to Brittany.
I’m an anxious person, anyway, so waiting is almost always a struggle, but waiting to find out if Brittany would also fall in love with the changes was excruciating. Then the words came: “I actually started the read-through of your draft this morning and I’M LOVING IT.”
Utter relief coursed through me. A huge smile spread across my face, and I’m fairly certain I raced downstairs to show the email to my partner.
What I’m Doing Now
As I await the official feedback on my draft (which, as I understand it, will be primarily line edits since I did a lot of the major developmental stuff already), I’ve been trying to keep writing steadily. For a few months, I didn’t write anything, since it really felt like all my creative energy went into this huge project and left a sort of vacuum behind. So I recovered by reading books, as one does.
In the last few days, though, I’ve put together a few new poems and a few new short stories. I’ve even submitted to some writing contests. It feels like it’s time to put my stuff out into the world again now that I’ve had a break. And the major stuff? We’re not even close to that yet. The book comes out in October of this year, and I’m hoping that a few more things fall into place before then so I can make those super fun announcements.
I am working on some other stories, as well. I made the difficult decision to continue putting off my MFA courses for another term. With an entire summer looming before me, I want to use it to work on my own writing in the way I want to do it, and I think I can be more productive if I do that without also trying to be a student.
Here’s What I Read
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Mrs. Wickham by Sarah Page
One Night on the Island by Josie Silver
Anything I could get my hands on by Lorraine Heath
The Guilded Age Heiresses trilogy by Harper St. George
What I’m Currently Reading
poetry by Emily Dickinson (for the literature class I’m teaching)
MAUS by Art Spiegelman (for another literature class I’m teaching)
The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray (because a friend recommended it)
Flowerheart by Catherine Bakewell
Dear Medusa by Olivia A. Cole
Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen (because I often reread her books)
