Methinks it is time I blogged about editing or in other words wrote about writing (meta alert!). As many of you know (or don't know depending on who is reading this blog) I have been working on what I considered a dark fantasy for five years. I finished the actual writing on January 12, 2010 a date I precisely remember because it's my late mother's birthday. The past three years have been spent editing, submitting queries, being rejecting, becoming extremely depressed/suicidal, gaining a crap ton of weight, finding new encouragement through an amazing support system, writing other stories and fanfics, working on that fore mentioned crap ton of weight, and currently re-editing. I went from over 212k words to currently just under 140k, which as a non-published writer is one of the most important things ever. I also decided I was going to market it as a paranormal romance instead of a dark fantasy even though it has elements of the latter, because in a romance novel the big bad doesn't have to be a particular entity but only a situation that keeps the protagonists apart. The correct genre is something else that is very important in marketing as you don't want to have fifty billion of them when you sub, but just one main one even if the story could fit in several. I think of the novel more as a Gothic fairytale than anything else, but I'll get to that soon enough.
The novel is titled The Serpent's Tale and it's set in "ye olde olden times" similar to Game of Thrones, Sword of Truth and other similar stories so no tech, shiny swords, and fancy, fancy clothes. The title is a double entendre to "the Serpent's Tail," which is the name of the main male character's weapon, which is of course a sword because I love swords. The male MC's name is Uriel, which btw is pronounced "yore-EYE-EL," not "yore-ee-EL" with slightly more emphasis on the middle syllable. Most people don't say it right and I just kinda decided that during one of my read out loud edits, where I just found myself saying it like that and I liked it. He's an assassin/dark angel if you couldn't tell the last half of the latter part from his name. He doesn't really know this yet, although it's pretty damn obvious to everyone else since, well, he looks like an awesome Gothic one, long black hair, gold eyes, paler than white skin, and, oh yeah, a freaking halo. He's hired by the main religious bigwigs, the Order of the Holy Serpent, to escort/guide/protect Maya, a priestess, to their Holy City way way in the west for reasons unknown, but it's a fairly simple sounding job, and Uriel has a bit (and by a bit I mean HUGE) hero complex so he agrees to do it even though she utterly despises him. Maya is pretty damn adorable herself (note: I don't write about ugly people. Life is way too short for that shit). She looks like a tiny Gothic doll with her dark, wispy hair, and cream complexion, but she obviously doesn't dress the part being a priestess and demure and whatnot. She's also a virgin. Important. Uriel is insanely and inhumanely beautiful, which drives her up a wall because one, his an assassin so ewwy evil! And two she has this idea that she's plain bordering ugly because the other priestesses in her house tell her so. To the former point this is a huge concept for me because it really delves into the Aesthetic Fallacy idea that I came up with a while ago that TV Tropes essentially nails with its Beauty Equals Goodness page. I'm still writing an essay on it though! Beautiful people are not evil and if they are then there are a SLEW of excuses either real or imagined that you can toss out to explain away the bad. This is a tangent I don't want to get into now, but if you know me think about who I'm the BIGGEST fangirl of. See? There you go.
Anyway, Maya hates him, but she's stuck with him because he's her guide to the Holy City, and she also hates admitting that she thinks he's attractive, a problem he shares even though he thinks she's a total brat. Well something happens where she gets kidnapped by slavers who intend to sell her after they've raped the shit out of her, and after Uriel rescues her, she realizes that are far worse things in the world than him and his existence must serve some purpose after all since he only kills bad people.
This is the part I'm actually at in the editing and I have to tell you...I HATE the part where she gets kidnapped. HATE HATE HATE IT, but it has to be in there because it's the turning point. There has been way too much rape rhetoric in currently events because jackasses still believe that a woman could be "asking for it," or the way she's dressed "provokes" men to rape them. Well, if this is true than men are ravening beasts who can't control their urges and why should women be forced to dress/act a certain way because of this? If this is the case then maybe men need to be locked up or not allowed to go out at night since they're the one's committing the heinous acts! *ahem* Excuse me...I'll step down off the pedestal and get back to my novel. The part after it I love because I can FINALLY show Uriel's true character since he's been all aloof/mysterious prior to this and you're really not sure if he is going to harm her like Maya fears through this first part. Once she starts seeing him for how he really is he starts showing it. Of course...this becomes a big problem when feelings get caught by both equally, but they still have obligations to fulfill...
I'll try to keep up with where I am in the editing process and hopefully any of you reading like my bibble babble about this. This novel has essentially taken over my life. It was in my head for nearly a decade before I was finally able to write it down, inspired by fanfic, and impossible to ignore. If I don't write about Uriel and Maya for a few days all I hear is their dialogue in my head or I see scenes play out in my mind. I'm a writer...did you truly expect me to be sane?
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