Step Away from the Manuscript!

Well. I finally forced myself to step away from the manuscript and send copies of Soulless out to my beta readers (and I’d still love to take on a few more, if anyone else would like to help me out! Just let me know!), which means I have to step away and leave it alone until I hear back from them. Yesterday, I kept trying to make all these little changes, sprucing it up, as much as I could, trying to use that as an excuse for not releasing it to my trusty betas, but, at one point, I had to clamp down, stop myself, and move on. It’s difficult, when you’ve spend so much of the last few months, pouring every free minute into something, to just let it go and leave it be. But it’s important and necessary, and, in about a month, I’ll return to it not only with completely fresh eyes, but also a load of comments and suggestions from entirely new people.

It’s exciting, but it’s hard. Letting your baby go out there into the world all by themselves without you there to hold their hand. Pardon me while i go find a paper bag to hyperventilate into.

Now is the time to let go of Soulless for a little while and focus on other things. The latest rough draft of Serpent in a Cage is nearly finished, so let’s try to get that done and typed up and through some first-round edits. I’ve got plenty of time to focus on writing and editing and sending out short stories now. And there’s also Heartless, Soulless‘s sequel, which will need to be written by next year.

Besides that, there’s plenty of things to do with Soulless that don’t involve the manuscript itself. The Kickstarter is officially live, so there’s promoting that, and I’ve decided to get the cover professionally done, so I’ve got to choose my images and send out a proposal. I really had no intention of doing a professional cover until I tried to find a good image for the Kickstarter campaign and actually fell in love with some of the stock images I found. Probably is, now I can’t choose a favorite! If you get the chance, please check out this Shutterstock lightbox and let me know if any of the images there grab you as a good cover image. I’ve got my favorites, for various reasons, but I’m curious as to what others might think.

Also, if you have any recommendation for cover artists, please let me know! I think I have someone in mind already, but I don’t want to make my decision too hastily. If I’m going to be putting in the money for a cover, I want to make sure it’s money well spent.

Thanks, everyone! Happy writing.