Ghost Inn

BevVincent

Passed the NaNoWriMo goal this morning, and am at least 3/4 of the way through the novel. The pace is starting to pick up, the disparate threads are starting to come together, and some nasty things are happening to one character!

BevVincent

Keyed in my editorial changes after rereading the first 70 pages of the manuscript while away and submitted the month's work to NaNoWriMo for validation. Now I'm back to writing new material and have added a little bit over the past couple of mornings. I think I'm going to try to finish it before I do any more revising. Keep that head of steam at a full boil.

BevVincent

I wrote a chapter this morning, skipped two chapters and wrote the beginning of another chapter. The novel has six point-of-view characters, but by this point in the proceedings, two sets of them are paired off and one of them is incapacitated, so I'm rotating through three different scenes in fairly short chapters. I liked where I left off with chapter 61, but I wanted to continue that story so I could find out how it turns out, so I went straight to 64. I'll go back and fill in 62 and 63 this weekend.

BevVincent

The end draws nigh! I'm in the middle of the climax and I already have the denouement mapped out in my head. I just need to be sure that my six major characters get their fair shake in the finale.

BevVincent

Very close to the end now. I've bumped up my estimated word count for the final product (since I've already gone past the original!). I hope to finish the first draft sometime this week.

BevVincent

Finished the first draft this morning. A little anticlimactic because I've been feeling like I was finished with the story for several days now--I just hadn't written it down yet.



I have a CD column due on Wednesday. Once I get that out of the way, I'm going back to the beginning to give it a thorough grammar/continuity edit and then will send it off to my agent for his opinion.

BevVincent

I spent the last two weeks editing Ghost Inn. Mostly a quick read-through, looking for typos, tightening up the prose and fixing continuity gaffes. In the process, I trimmed about 4000 words from the manuscript, so it's a nice tidy 90,000 words/353 pages.



I e-mailed the MS to my agent and to my first reader this morning, and printed it out in hardcopy for the first time ever to send my agent as well, as he prefers reading it on paper. My first reader is VERY FAST and I already got back a table of typos, some suggestions and a mostly glowing review.



I definitely think this is more commercial than any of my previous book-length fiction. I just hope my agent agrees!

mas67_05

Bev,



How goes the progress - I look forward to reading your book. I enjoyed the DT so much.

BevVincent

I haven't been working on the novels for a while. My agent is still sending out Missing Persons. He gave me some extensive feedback about Ghost Inn, so I plan to tackle that one this summer to see if I can whip it into shape. It was written quickly, so there are a lot of things that didn't come together the way they might have.



My short fiction, though, has been coming along pretty well. If you go to http://www.bevvincent.com/fiction.html you will see what's just out and what's coming out soon. I'm especially pleased with the Doctor Who anthology and next year's crime anthology edited by Michael Connelly.

mas67_05

Cool thanks!!!!

BevVincent

Ghost Inn has come back to life. I've rewritten it a few times and then did a savage surgery on it to remove some extraneous points of view chapters, then stitched up the patient and did another complete revision to add some contemporary elements.

It's in the hands of four beta readers at the moment. After I get all their feedback, I'll make another pass through it and send it to my agent. Fingers crossed, but I feel quite good about this novel now. Maybe it will be my first.

Hedda Gabler

I hope it is and I know it's good!  Keep us posted with updates.

Now, once this gets published, will an anthology of your short stories be close behind?

You have so many short stories that I can't get my hands on that would be great to see.

BevVincent

One step at a time! I have high hopes for this novel, but one never knows. 

I have several thoughts about short story collections, but I need time to develop a strategy. I have some loosely associated stories that could be turned into a fix-up novel (Bradbury did that a few times). Have to give it plenty of thought. Short story collections are a bit of a tough sell. CD could probably sell a bunch of copies, but who would read beyond people already familiar with my work? 

Hedda Gabler

Yes, I'm being selfish.  It just seems the wheels of publishing just grind along so slowly!  

And I totally respect and understand wanting to grow your audience outside of a small press.  It's smart business.  

but dammit! I want to read those stories!

BevVincent

Patience is one thing I've learned in this business. It never hurts to wait to do things the right way. Best case scenario, Ghost Inn won't be published until 2022 -- almost 20 years after I wrote my first synopsis for the book I was thinking about writing. It took 13-14 years for the Dissonant Harmonies project to finally come together from our initial discussions. I'm publishing a story this year that I wrote in 1983! It all happens when it happens!

It was my agent who counseled me about the need to grow my audience. He's a smart dude!

GNTLGNT

....you have slow-cooked a gourmet body of work Bev.....the buffet would be the short story collection.....but the main repast is the novel, and I think you do yourself a disservice by wondering if anyone outside CD readers would enjoy your work.....good writing is good writing...period....it will find a market, AND it's calorie free!......