First up, here’s a motivational montage from Mr. Chuck Wendig. There may or may not … hah! Who am I kidding? … there will be multiple swear words, multiple times 🙂

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And now, what I’ve been up to this last little while? … Arting Harder  Futhermuckers. 🙂 (to paraphrase Mr. Wendig)

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In 1982, Raymond Feist  released ‘The Magician’. His publisher told him it was too long, and to remove 50,000 words.

“… And cut I did. Mostly line by line…” – from the foreword of The Magician, revised edition.

Ten years later he put ‘em all back in.

“… to reconstruct and change, to add and cut as I see fit, to bring forth what is known in the publishing world as the “Author’s Preferred Edition’ …” (my guess is he’d garnered enough clout that his publisher couldn’t object)

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I didn’t have to wait that long.

The original publisher of Mortal Instinct was useless, worse than useless, in ways that, if you searched the name you’d get a good idea of what I’m talking about. I’m not going to reference any of the crap here … mostly because it’s water under the bridge and we’ve all moved on.

I was waiting out my contract (rather than paying to get out of the contract early) which was slated to end next month, when, in October (2015) another company bought them out, and all the contracts along with it. I talked about my process to renew or not renew with the new publisher HERE.

Well, the negotiations went swimmingly and I signed on the dotted line, again. Only one book, for a specific time period.

And, here I am working on my Author Preferred Edition. Bigger, brighter, better written, certainly better edited … Oiiii! The stories I could tell!  … Bugger, I said I wouldn’t.

** claps hands firmly over mouth and mumbles, “Mustnotspeak, mustnotspeak, mustnotsp …**

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It’s one thing to spot opportunities when they are placed in our path and take them up. It’s another to have a second whack at getting them right.

I’m hoping to be done by the end of the month. All digits crossed. Then it goes to the publisher. We’ll see what they do with it!

So, I’ll be back … when I’m done. (which is what the Terminator should have said!)

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The title of this post was inspired by that esteemed musical ensemble, The Muppets.