The final (hopefully) read-through!

I know, I know, I’ve not been an attentive blogger recently, and I apologize. But to my credit, it’s been a busy few weeks. 

As I’ve mentioned, I decided to try offering Dawn of the Lightbearer for pre-order. Has it been a success? Yes and no. It depends on how you measure success. Has anyone taken the leap and purchased a book from a relatively unknown author on the cover and synopsis alone with no sample chapters? No- big surprise! But, it is nice to have an Amazon link to refer to when discussing the upcoming release, and although the deadline added stress, it kept me on task. I think this is vital. Having that release date dangling over my head gave me a push, and it was a hard one. To make sure I finished Dawn of the Lightbearer before June 29th for its July 2nd release on Amazon Kindle, I went into overdrive, and I’m about three weeks ahead of schedule. 

The thing is, when you start editing, you never know what you’ll find. Sometimes you need to clean up an ending, fill in a plot hole, re-write a character, or retool whole chapters. Every once in and while, god forbid, you have to re-write an entire book, so adding a deadline into the mix was scary. If you’ve followed my journey as I wrote Dawn of the Lightbearer, you’ll know I essentially let it write itself, and I’m confident where it ended up. The universe is a genius, and sometimes it’s best just to let it steer the course. If this were the Slaying of the Bull, for example, which is a more convoluted story situated in real history, I would have an ulcer by now.

After a little over two months (I finished my first draft on April 4th) of re-reading and polishing, I’m on the final stretch. Last night, I began what I think may be my final read-through before starting formatting for publication. I believe this will be the 10th pass through the entire book of roughly 130,000 words. So far, I like what I see, and even after reading the book so many times in a row, I’m not bored with it. This is an excellent sign. I think it’s a testament to a successful book if you can enjoy reading it even when you know what will happen. 

I’ve grown a lot as a writer over the past year through publishing two books and starting this blog (my first blog post was on April 3, 2020). I’m writing or at least interacting with the craft every single day. As a result, I’ve learned so much, and although I would not say I’m a successful author yet, I’m growing, and that is what life is all about. The Dawn of the Lightbearer is my best work. No doubt about that. It’s full of mystery, adventure, and has plenty of action. The characters are developed, the prose is not overly flowery, and it’s just a damn good yarn that is an excellent beginning for a much larger tale. The Island of Stone and the Slaying of the Bull are good books, and I stand behind them, but they were written a long time ago and suffer a bit from inexperience. Dawn of the Lightbearer is a demonstration of my writing now, and although I don’t profess that it’s a work of genius, it’s the best I can do at the moment. It’s another snapshot of my quest to be an author. I have no aspiration to win a Nobel prize, but I do aspire to be an author you can depend on to offer a good nugget of entertainment. I hope Dawn of the Lightbearer gets me there. But don’t take my word for it. Find out for yourself. It will be available on July 2nd!

Cheers!