Hey everyone! I know it's been a while since the last time I posted - sorry about that. I've been wrapped up in the madness that is writing Book 2 (which I am glad to say that I finally have a working title that I like for... but I'm not going to say it because, knowing me, it's going to change again in a few weeks :P). So, in the heat of the writing marathon, I've put the old blog to the side a bit which I am not happy about. I think one the main problem was that I was starting to feel really down about the whole writing process while marching along through the endless typing that is book 2.
You see, when I first set out to write EOA, it wasn't nearly as complex of a story as it became. As I outlined, the story evolved tenfold (as stories tend to do), and my original plan of EOA being a stand alone novel was quickly swept away. (Here's the bit where you might not understand everything I'm talking about it you haven't read EOA- I'll do my best to explain the relevance of various names or places from the story. If you have, yay! Keep on reading! If you haven't, you can try to trudge through this bit or skip down a paragraph). In my first outline, the basic structure of the society was the same, but the story was supposed to center on a young woman from the Heart (the slum district) named Juliet Fenn who gets ranked as the First (she basically becomes a very big deal) and tries to use her new position to instigate change in the way the system is run. The book was supposed to be about the political battle that would ensue and the adversity she would face in an effort to make things better for the people she cared about. I had wanted to show the difficulties the people in the Heart faced through flashbacks, but as I was writing, it didn't feel right. That's when Gwendolyn was born in my mind (Juliet's twin sister who stays trapped in the slum districts). As I went on and Gwendolyn began to flourish as a character, I knew that she had to be more than a lense to see the Heart through as changes took place. Her character was independent, feisty, and bullheaded, and the idea of her watching injustices take place without getting involved didn't seem realistic at all. I created the Fracture (a revolutionary group) purely as a stage for her to showcase her strengths, but I knew that she wouldn't be willing to accept the Fracture's extremist ideals if Juliet's character didn't take a sharp turn away from the political idealist I had originally intended her to be. And once I was sure of that, it became clear that the story wasn't going to fit into one book, so I split up my outline into three and bulked up each piece.
Okay, so if you didn't read the last paragraph, I explained why EOA became the first book of The Corpus Chronicles and not a stand alone novel. Moving on... when I wrote EOA I was in love with the story. I was mesmerized by the world and the different personalities that were developing though the cast. And then I made the rookie author mistake of thinking that everyone else would think so too. I didn't plan to go indie in the beginning. I wanted my name to be on one of those shiny covers on the shelves of every Barnes and Nobles (I mean, come on, who doesn't?) under the protective wing of one of those big name publishing companies.
When I realized that if I wanted to see EOA in print anytime soon, I would have to go it alone, I didn't entirely understand what that meant. I didn't understand the hours of marketing it would take to sell one copy or the difficulty of booking a handful of reviews. When a family member said they didn't fully understand an aspect of the society, it was like a punch in the stomach. The beautiful cover art I was so happy with initially became something I feared, and I would find myself wondering if putting EOA out there had been a mistake. And then I would open the book to check a name or place while getting the wheels of book 2 turning in the beginning and I would fall in love with the the story all over again.
I can't truthfully say I've gotten past those fears. I think it's something natural every artist who shares their work with others faces, just another part of the job. Now I'm in the middle of book 2, and I'm facing a new problem while writing. I had heard other authors saying that writing a series was a long term commitment, and to not get yourself roped into one if you weren't absolutely sure you could handle it. It wasn't that I ignored the advice - I just assumed that I could handle it. (Now this is the bit where all that rambling I've been doing all ties together or so I hope) But what changed since last fall when I wrote the first chapter of EOA shelved it to play with later was publishing it and all those fears that came with seeing the book in print. Writing started to seem like something I had to do instead of something I wanted and liked to do. It wasn't that I lost my love for the story, but more that I had deviated so far from my initial plans. I wasn't traditionally published, and I wasn't going to be until I wrote and published the rest of The Corpus Chronicles and then a new manuscript, which I then would to take through the query process all over again and without the carefree optimism of a novice.
Writing book 2 and finishing the series has become a greater challenge than I ever expected. This is mainly because of my own insecurities about being an indie author and the challenges I face because of it, but, as people tend to do, I've said nothing about the good parts - particularly about how absolutely amazingly fun the entire indie publication process was. I have complete control over the title, the cover art, and I am able to write about out of the box topics and ideas that would not be approved by those big name publishing companies I love so much. I've connected with other indie authors and read amazing work I probably wouldn't have found if I wasn't indie myself. Like anything, indie authoring is full of high and low points, and is up to the author to make sure the bad bits don't overshadow the good, and when you write a series, it's like multiplying all those little good and bad bits, the fear and the fun, by a lot.
As promised, one long overdue, non-proofread ramble.
-Esha
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