Bonjour mes amis!

Today is a good day because I identified the thing.

Rewind to about a month ago, me following up on the delivery of MINE draft three, and a long discussion with the publisher. It was not the conversation I expected, and caused a true Come to Zeus moment. Also, a valuable learning experience once I’d recovered from the shock and worked through the 5 stages of grief. 

I believe it was valuable enough to share with you, my friends.

If you have a book in production with Inkshares, then you’re familiar with the Author Questionnaire. Check out number two below. It’s the question that needs to be answered to take the story to the next level (a.k.a. sell that shiz!).

2) What is the hook that will really grab your reader? Please pitch the book in one or two sentences. This ‘pitch’ should be as pithy and captivating as possible.

From the commercial perspective, I am an unknown author, aspiring to be a mid-lister, and not even regarded as an up-and-comer (to my knowledge) so the reality of creating a suspenseful thriller with snippets of beautiful prose in a compelling voice that has literary aspirations isn’t enough to sell the book. What I do have is thirty seconds and a paragraph on the back of the book cover.

That’s my takeaway.

So, I called a meeting with my dev editor. I said, no matter how much it costs, no matter what it takes, I want to get my hair cut into the shape of a dick head.

Kidding. Lighten up. Been there, done that. 

What I said was no matter the outcome here, publishing wise, let’s take this story to the next level. She said, aiiight, let’s do it. Then she gave me a new insight into a core theme of the book I hadn’t noticed, but knew in my heart she’d nailed it.

Another big but, though, is how to illuminate the thing into the next iteration of the manuscript?

I put it all aside, knowing I had to trust the process which involves a cult-like faith in the creative higher power that the solution exists in the giant playground where ideas run and jump and fall off the monkey bars, breaking their arms and chipping their teeth.

Give it the space it needs, and all shall be revealed. Just don’t eat the sandbox treats.

Last night I lay in bed, feeling a weight like swimming in an ice-cold lake with concrete mukluks. Then, I got up early because something was going on and not just because I had to use the bathroom.

My process involves capturing precocious ideas when they throw rocks at me unexpectedly. This morning I went through those notes, compiled them into a document and parsed them into a solution, if not the solution.

It involves a looping cycle like the worm Ouroboros, the book’s tail eating the beginning, and…BAM! There’s the manuscript, regurgitated on the pages. 

At some point this spring or early summer, I’ll let you all know if this works, being good at completion to a deadline (once upon a time a young princess told me I had two minutes, the end).

Here’s another takeaway.

Nurture that germ that’s going to infect the reader and spread the story like a contagion across the pages, so it grows, unchecked, into…the thing...

March 1! 
I’m on chapter 30 of 42, and I am SO EXCITED about Jane’s story. 
While much of Rock of Ages is a contemporary story, there are two other points of view. Cassidy’s mother, Paloma, meets her father in Prague just after the fall of communism. When she has trouble getting pregnant, the two move back to his hometown in West Virginia.

Cassidy’s grandmother, Jane, signs on as a Government Girl  and moves from WV to Washington DC, where she classifies fingerprints for the FBI during WWII. This is the part I’m rewriting now and it is so, so fun. I’ve been nerding out big time with the research, watching old films, reading old books, looking at old comics, listening to old music. I’m kind of obsessed right now with the time period and with the craft of historical fiction writing. It’s all making me feel really close to my grandma, which is bittersweet.

I’ll post the first chapter of Jane’s story on the Inkshares story page after sending this so you can take a look! Let me know what you think. I hope you’re as excited as I am!
I hope by this time next month I’ll be VERY close to finishing this draft.
Thank you, as always, for your support and encouragement!

The winners of the Inkshares Mystery Contest have been announced, and I’m happy to say that "Cat’s Paw" is on the list! This means we will be going forward with all the editing and rewriting and nosegrinding that goes into the publication process, and, probably a year from today, the book will make it into your hands.

Onwards!

Greetings wonderful followers, 

Guess what! As of Jan 30/19, it has been a full year since my first novel, Beyond the Code, was published and sent out into the world. And what a year it has been. Just for fun, let take a look at my author journey so far. 

I got Beyond the Code on the shelves of Indigo Books and did several book signing events at Indigo and Chapters all over the city of Edmonton. Actually had a kid want to take a picture with me because I was an author. Really cool. 

I was a guest panellist at panels on character development and Urban Fantasy writing at the When Words Collide writers convention in Calgary. 

Beyond the Code has been given great reviews from Roll Out Reviews, Literary Titan, The San Francisco Book Review, Readers Favourite, Opal Publishing, and Delusion of Literacy. These are people who know what they’re talking about. Also, from the reviews of my readers, Beyond the Code is running at a 4.23/5 rating on Goodreads and a 4.8/5 rating on Amazon.com. 

I was a guest on several podcasts talking about my writing and other geeky stuff. I’ve been on Spilling Ink, Just Joshing, Functional Nerds (this was my favourite one), Stories by Nerds, Alive after Reading, and Go Indie Now. You can check out these episodes through the kelseybarthel,ca website or the Beyond the Code Facebook page. 

And, last but not least, Beyond the Code was a featured book with the Scifi and Fantasy Network. 

Like i said, it’s been one hell of a year. So far it’s been a pretty good showing for my first novel and I am very happy with it. As for the future of Beyond the Code and me as an author, that’s still very much in the planning stage. Right now, I’m working on Beyond the Code’s sequel Beyond the Masquerade (working title) and like always, i will always endeavour to keep my readers informed. 

Thank you all for staying with me on this journey and I hope I can continue to deliver, 

Kelsey Rae Barthel