March is over, and it was incredibly busy but rewarding. Work on Human Resources has continued at pace, with an important milestone being achieved.

Developmental Edit
I’ve been working with my developmental editor to turn the draft manuscript into something that will truly shine. It’s been hard work, but during the last month we reached an important milestone — we finished work on the change plan (completed the new outline) and I have now started the rewrite. I wrote a blog about the developmental edit process and reaching this milestone on my website. I’m now flat out writing every night, preparing a new version of the manuscript. There are numerous new scenes, a lot of changes to existing scenes, and writing them will progress at an uneven rate (as a general rule, new scenes will take much longer to write than updating an existing scene). However, I’ll keep you informed (and myself on the hook) by reporting progress as I go! The chart below shows the current status of the rewrite.



Cover design
Work is commencing on the new cover design! Inkshares have an amazing cover designer working on this for me. Right now he’s gathering information before producing concepts to work through. 

Schedule
We don’t have a firm production schedule for the book — this stage of the editing process is just too fluid. What I can tell you is it should be sometime (early) in 2018. It is unlikely to be January at this stage, but I hope we’ll get everything in order to get the book out during the first quarter. I’ll keep everyone informed as we progress — the further along the process we get, the more reliable the predicted release date will become.

Say hello!
Don’t forget to jump on my Facebook page and hit like. I’m also on Twitter and Instagram.

Dear Sparked reader,

Thank you so much for your amazing support during our preorder campaign last fall. You might be wondering where the heck your copy of the book is, and why we’ve taken so long to update you. 

Good news! We have a publication date: October 3, 2017. Your book will be mailed (or become available as an e-book) on that date. And the reason we’ve taken so long to update you is that we’ve been working hard on making Sparked completely ready for your eyes. 

We thought you might be interested to hear a bit about that process and the lessons we learned, especially if you’re a writer yourself or interested in writing. 

Lesson #1: Don’t shut down when you get feedback, even if you THINK you’re done.  

When someone gives you feedback, it’s human nature to focus on the negative, and it’s a writer’s nature to blow the negative wildly out of proportion. After Sparked achieved its preorder target, a developmental editor gave us a—gulp—twenty-page letter that sent us into a tailspin. The word “overkill” jumped out and something about how we should remove every reference to zombies. We’d already revised Sparked countless times. In despair, Helena couldn’t even bring herself to read the whole thing, while Malena lost herself in cat videos on Youtube. 

 But when we forced ourselves to read the letter line by line, we were shocked at how positive it actually was. It was like realizing that the mean girl at school, muttering insults under her breath, was actually complimenting your fashion sense (and giving you some useful pointers too). If we’d received that feedback with an open mind in the first place, we would have gotten the revision done a lot sooner.

Lesson #2: Thinking your book is done is usually a clear sign that you need to do another draft.  

You should never tempt fate using the word “final” when naming a draft of your book (as in “SparkedFinal.doc”). Just as we were treating ourselves to a celebratory lunch, we received notes from editor number two, our line editor. More changes were needed, including more “sexual tension.” Believe us, it is not easy to find a way for the hero and heroine to make eyes at each other while also trying to prevent the end of the world. But we set to work again.  

In the end, both editors were totally right and we’ re grateful to them for their brilliant insights and even more grateful the book is finally finished (or at least going to press. If you see more that we should have changed, maybe keep it to yourself at this point). We’re also excited that the book is coming out in October because it’s a spooky book that takes place in the week before Halloween, and…

Well, after all that work, we don’t want to spoil the story, do we?

We will update again when there’s more concrete news to share (readings! parties!) but for now, we are deeply grateful for your support and your patience and we can’t wait to send our book to you.

Warmly,

The ‘lenas