Tying Up the Mystery Ends
So finally sent what I hope is the last editing round of The Hidden Prince back to my editor. Most of it was simple typos and punctuation errors, but I also had to try to add the right level of clues to the mystery at the end of the story. Sometimes it’s harder to write a single sentence than a whole chapter.
Each Before the Fairytale story pays tribute to a different literary style that’s intended to reflect the main character’s personality. Since Kaleb takes the lead in The Hidden Prince, the story is set up to reflect elements of a Gothic novel (only in a Medievalish fantasy setting). However, I ended up with a murder mystery at the end of the story. Since I was not aiming for a “true” mystery, more focused on Kaleb’s psychological reaction to the events, I didn’t put as much effort into setting up relevant clues. But Megan, my editor, has been heavily involved in Killer Nashville, a local mystery writers group/convention, and she didn’t like letting a sloppy mystery pass even if it wasn’t the main focus of the book.
The actual writing of additional sentences did not take more than a couple days, but I was a little intimidated about how to bring in the necessary clues without making them glaringly out of place. So I found a lot of other personal projects to distract myself with. On the plus side my basement is a bit less cluttered now.
Other reason I may have been stalling is Ameoba Ink needed to build up a little cash to pay the cover artist before commissioning the cover artist, so there’ll still be a bit of a delay as the cover art and layout and so forth get done. But hopefully my editor will sign off on my updates as acceptable, and The Hidden Prince will get a public release this year.
Also trying to work out getting Seventh Night and Horse Feathers into paperback form.
Each Before the Fairytale story pays tribute to a different literary style that’s intended to reflect the main character’s personality. Since Kaleb takes the lead in The Hidden Prince, the story is set up to reflect elements of a Gothic novel (only in a Medievalish fantasy setting). However, I ended up with a murder mystery at the end of the story. Since I was not aiming for a “true” mystery, more focused on Kaleb’s psychological reaction to the events, I didn’t put as much effort into setting up relevant clues. But Megan, my editor, has been heavily involved in Killer Nashville, a local mystery writers group/convention, and she didn’t like letting a sloppy mystery pass even if it wasn’t the main focus of the book.
The actual writing of additional sentences did not take more than a couple days, but I was a little intimidated about how to bring in the necessary clues without making them glaringly out of place. So I found a lot of other personal projects to distract myself with. On the plus side my basement is a bit less cluttered now.
Other reason I may have been stalling is Ameoba Ink needed to build up a little cash to pay the cover artist before commissioning the cover artist, so there’ll still be a bit of a delay as the cover art and layout and so forth get done. But hopefully my editor will sign off on my updates as acceptable, and The Hidden Prince will get a public release this year.
Also trying to work out getting Seventh Night and Horse Feathers into paperback form.