Work in progress

After what feels like an eternity I’m getting round to the all-important revisions for my urban fantasy novella, What Sweet Music They Make. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I’m not superwoman, and that I cannot write new works in progress while revising AND still try to keep on top of my editing obligations for Lyrical Press. And while this all happens, I’m still beta-reading for my fellow authors, reviewing books and writing blog posts and newspaper articles.

There’s more than enough work present to keep me out of mischief. What’s worse is that my revisions have been piling up. I still have my steampunk novel featuring vampires and pirates waiting in the wings, not to mention some hard decisions about revising Camdeboo Nights, my only foray into YA urban fantasy. So the buck stops here. I’m in revision mode. I’ve just completed second-round edits on Hell’s Music, my next Therése von Willegen novel, so I have no excuses keeping me from the other titles languishing in the wings.

I had fun writing What Sweet Music They Make. It combines two of my greatest loves: vampires and music. The story is a dip into the same setting where my current Lyrical release, The Namaqualand Book of the Dead kicks off. I’ve spent time working out how vampires function in my milieu and the reason why there are always fewer vampires than mortals. C’mon, we can’t all be undead and sparkly.

Jokes aside, my vampires don’t sparkle. And after many decades, most of them lose the taste for immortality, though they remain tenacious, anachronisms in many cases.

I’ve had some great feedback from my betas so far. Two chapters need to bite the dust at the start. This doesn’t pain me as much as I’d have thought, because I’ll be releasing the first chapter as a freebie prologue in anticipation of the story’s actual release. Yes, yes… I know I haven’t sold the story yet, but that’s the least of my worries. What I do know is that I’ll need to add additional material near the end, and the epilogue may go the way of most prologues upon submission.

This is the fun part of revising, where the novella is still fluid, where I can tweak and layer, make people care more about my characters. And you know what? I’m in no mood to rush, either. I’m going to savour this time where I can return to the world of Severin and Tersia, and groom them into memorable characters.

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