Category: The Ruby Key

  • Doing the RUBY KEY editor’s revisions

    It’s going to be a race–I have to have the revised RUBY KEY edits done by July 24th, and I estimate that I’ll need to add about 30,000-40,000 new words to the project to tell the story the way my editor and I have decided it needs to be told, while updating and reworking the…

  • And on to saner things, plus Book Giveaway update

    The GREEN MAGIC I proposal left at the beginning of the week, unmentioned and unlauded, but done at last to my satisfaction. HAWKSPAR is unresolved–I won’t know anything more about it until I hear back from my agent, Robin. And I am in the midst of happier–much happier–things. THE RUBY KEY, you see, felt short…

  • HAWKSPAR problems

    Some significant editing problems surfaced during my revision of the copyedit of HAWKSPAR. I’m on hold on the revision while we sort them out. So this week I’ll be finishing the type-in of the GREEN MAGIC proposal, and getting back to the revision concepts for RUBY KEY.

  • Friday Snippet, from The Ruby Key

    The following snippet is the beginning of Chapter Two from The Ruby Key, the first book of the MOON AND SUN series. This is YA. Genna, the heroine and narrator of the first book, is fourteen, and her brother Dan is twelve. NOTICE: This material is copyrighted, first draft, probably buggy, and possibly not even…

  • So now that I’m done…

    Okay. The Mac sending mail sound has just echoed across the computer, which means the finished Ruby Key is on its way to my agent, Robin. I’m pretty wiped out, but very happy with the book. It wrapped at 63,000 words, which was well within my target zone, the new ending worked beautifully, (though I…

  • 3:33 AM and Done

    63,199 words final count, an ending I love, and the rest of the book tucked away, too. The Ruby Key is finished.

  • One of those interesting statistics

    While editing, I used a word that dinged on my consciousness as having been in the book too often. The word? Looked. Scrivener has a word frequency counter that will tell you exactly how many times you’ve used a word—one of the things I have been missing and yearning for since the days when I…

  • Hit page 200

    Fifty pages remain. I fixed the part of the book that felt like it was wandering, today, and caught up on all the pages that I left undone on Friday. Back tomorrow, bright and early.

  • It broke me, but I’m back.

    About 3:30-4ish on Friday, I just could not do another word. I’d made it less than halfway through the pages I had to get, but I was staring at the page in front of me, and the gears in my head were just going “click, click, click” and my fingers weren’t moving. Sometimes, no matter…

  • God, I need a day off

    Fifty pages a day is just brutal.