After writing this book for over six months now, I thought I would have a finished first draft that would need only slight revisions and then some editing. Well, maybe a lot of editing. Boy, was I ever wrong. After having the manuscript passed around to three different beta readers, they all came back to me with their suggestions. Suggestions that I didn’t particularly like. You see, it is hard to take criticism, especially when you’re not used to it. You can say it hurts. And it does. Yet it’s more like a kick in the head. Well, anyway, the most prominent complaint that I received was that I would need to entirely rewrite the last hundred pages of Denial. That is almost twenty-five percent of the book! It seemed I had grossly overestimated one of my character’s personalities. I was hoping to bring along an ending where everything worked out, and everyone was happy. Well, unfortunately, when you’re dealing with the type of character I had written into the story, they never recover to the point at which I had first written them at the end of the book. What a bummer! I was advised that I had to be more realistic. But I thought the whole idea of “fiction: was that anything could happen. That the author was omniscient, and if I wanted the sky to be orangey with tufts of violet wafting across its double-sunned skies, so be it. Guess what? I was wrong. It’s not the first time, and most certainly will not be the second! Well, after a little finagling and, again, ‘out of the box’ thinking, I figured I would just save my original ending for my next book. Yep, that’s right. The next book that I’ve been working on as a sequel to this one: Denial II. But that’s just the working title. My first book, Denial, will dovetail perfectly into my next story (Denial II)–which may just include orangey skies etc. JK . . . Well, anyway, I’m now working through my plot changes, adjusting the storyline in several places throughout the manuscript, and setting up for an ending I hadn’t planned on writing. But no fears, it will still shock the reader and most definitely bring tears to everyone’s eyes! I hope.
Thanks for checking me out.
Enjoy the moment,
Remington Arquette