Update: Kira and the Rat Queen

It's been a couple weeks since my last blog post and I thought this would be the perfect time to update everyone on my progress concerning Kira and the Rat Queen.

Last week I invited a number of family members and close friends to participate in my Beta Reading conference for Kira and the Rat Queen. This was my first opportunity to hear feedback and impressions from an audience older than 11 years old.

I always enjoy this stage of the writing process, even though receiving criticism (even when that criticism is constructive and well-intentioned) is rarely fun. I remember writing a blog post about a year ago about my first negative review and how much it affected me. You can read all about it here: suck-it-up.html

I'm happy to report, after a year's worth of online criticism, my skin has gotten considerably thicker. It's easier now to separate the intentions behind someone's critique from the emotional impact  the words might otherwise carry. The end result was the best Beta Conference to date. I was able to listen to criticism without jumping in to defend myself, and to their great credit, my cadre of Beta Readers have refined their criticism, honing in on the issues I'm most curious to hear about.

The group had a bunch of questions and some really good suggestions that I'm going to try and incorporate into the third draft of my novel, and the end result will only be a better final draft.

I've contracted again with Liam Carnahan and his team at Invisible Ink Editing to comb through my prose for any additional missteps, and I anticipate publishing Kira and the Rat Queen right around Thanksgiving, just in time for Christmas.

In other news, now that Kira is almost finished, I've once again turned my attention to my sequel to ANOM: Awakening. I'm sorry to say I fell down on the job last spring when I thought I could balance, both narratives. ANOM moved to the back-burner for most of the summer as I pushed forward with Kira, but now the tables have turned and ANOM is once again my priority. The good news is that the first draft is halfway finished, and the time away has truly crystallized the story in my mind.

Finally, we continue to work on the audio book for ANOM: Awakening. A very talented voice actor, Owen McCuen, has recorded the novel, and now we only need to wait for the editing to be complete. With any luck, the ANOM: Awakening audio book will be available before the end of the year.

Next week I would love to answer your questions about any of my upcoming projects or the writing process in general. Submit your questions to my contact page and I'll answer as many as I can.

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