Greetings!
It’s been a busy few weeks, but I want to thank everyone who supported the Matt Archer: Legend launch last weekend. This has been the best launch yet, and I really appreciate your kind words, retweets and reviews.
Over the past week, I’ve been doing some beta reads and editing SIDELINED for its final pass. I’ve learned so much by working with the editors at Entangled — each pass has taught me something new about my writing, and how to make things tighter and more focused. I can’t wait for this book to come out. It’s truly a book of my heart.
One thing I’ve learned is to be certain that your character’s rationale, no matter how faulty, is always natural to their stage of life. I knew that to some extent–if you want to write YA, your characters will not think or act like adults. Still, over the course of an entire manuscript it’s easy to let your guard down. My takeaway is that I have to maintain constant vigilance to keep my characters in character.
Now I’m moving on to new work, and I’m really excited. I left Matt on a cliffhanger, so I need to fix things up for him in MA4, and I have two new ideas for contemporary YA stories. Should be a fun summer! But I’m looking forward to a vacation, too! : )
What plans do you have this summer?
“how to make things tighter and more focused” Just don’t let them suck the personality out of it in favor of streamlining things. đŸ˜› I can’t tell you how many times snippets of dialogue I’ve almost cut have turned out to be fan-favorites. (Have you looked at the public kindle highlights yet for the Matt books? It’s fun to see what people pick out.)
Yeah, editing and voice is a very fine balance. What to keep that allows the character some breathing room is something I try to watch.
On the highlights, heh, for some reason people liked Mike’s hypocritical anti-smoking lecture. That’s not the line I would’ve expected. : )