Busting Some Knee Caps

This has been a hellova week. Last Friday and Saturday I made a some huge head way on Releasing Chaos and was pretty pleased with myself. Earlier last week, I had sent Fate And Destiny to an editor and after some discussion on a couple of things I needed to change, I hopped in to make the fixes. In and out and I'd be finished. I get about half way through and the prose fell apart. O.O It looked as if I hadn't edited my manuscript at all. I was horrified and then so embarrassed I wanted to crawl under the desk. I remembered I finished editing the story last year but the changes that I recalled making weren't there. What happened?

Unfortunately, after trying to fix it quickly and reviewing all my saved copies in the five different areas and reading my notes, I ran across where I was reminding myself of the information that was lost when my system crashed... I had remembered some specific changes which I wrote down but at the time I had a couple of other projects that had come in to I had to edit. Then it all came back like a bad memory. I had planned on going back and refinishing, but I had put it off because returning to that medieval head space was hard. 

Then I forgot all about it. 

Later, I remembered I needed to do some self editing and I'd always start at the beginning, get to certain point and then other projects took my attention away. After a year had gone by, all I recalled off the top of my head was that I needed to look it over before I sent it off to the editor. Earlier this year I contacted one and said, hey no hurry whenever you're ready. I'll look it over in the meantime. I started from the beginning and got to a certain point and then other things took precedent. What I looked at was fine... and assumed the rest was on the same page. The editor said, "Send it my way." And I did.

The laugh was on me. I thought I would die of embarrassment. I had this anxiety attack last Sunday, wondering what in the hell had I done.

Now again, Fate And Destiny has been put off because I received the edits for Salvaging Toby's Heart. Then a couple of days later I received the edits for Ruby Red Booty Shorts And A Louisville Slugger. I think the galley for Starting Fires will be coming any day as well.

Oh, oh, oh! Let's not forget, I'm prepping for the blog tour for Surrounded by Crimson--it looks like I have about 15 posts to write. Before all of this happened, I picked up a reopened DRitC story over at GR which is due July 13th. I still have to complete Releasing Chaos. Which leads me back to Ruby Red.

I started on the edits for Ruby Red yesterday. I pulled up what I remembered of the play list for the story, the Brian Setze's Malaguena (the video at the top) was one that I had looped while Diego was busting some knee caps. It reminded me of the fun I had writing the story. I finished the majority of the edits today I had left a couple of comments to go back and address because I needed to clarify some things. Then I get to the editors final comment on her suggestion for the story, and I'm nodding my head in agreement to them all. She had pointed out several places were there were issues and I had planned to go back and see how I could fix them but there was much more which she addressed at the end.

So if you're one of the few who has read Ruby Red before, then expect some changes. Possibly some big changes. The sequence of events is going to be rearranged and the story lengthened to fix the gaping plot holes, scrub out the telling when it comes to Diego's background and his abuela, insert some romance between him and Beck--well, insert a relationship period. There is a good chance that it will be a completely different story. The gist will still be the same, the plot arc for the big bad won't change but there are holes that needed to be filled in.

The next couple of weeks are going to be jammed packed. Next week there is a blog tour for The Valespian Pact audiobooks. I'm taking a trip on June 4th to see a friend and then jumping over to Texas to visit with family. I'll return home June 10th or 11th. So that is a week with very little work going on. With luck, I'll have Ruby Red back to the publisher before I go or at least have it written so when I return home I can run through a self-edit one more time before turning back in to the publisher. I have to get my things together for Rainbow Con and I'm hoping that by July I'll have the DRitC story finished so that I can spend a couple of weeks going through Fate And Destiny. I may end up taking Releasing Chaos with me to Rainbow Con. And holy cow, I'm tired.

I'm going to take a page from Diego's book and start swinging away to knock out some of these projects as quick as I can. I'll be scarce on social media, so if you don't see me for a while, I'm slaying my own Bruja Blanco. Wish me luck as I bust some knee caps (metaphorically speaking)!

Thank you for stopping by and reading!!