The Ghost of Novels Past

About this time last year I was planning to self-publish AFTERLIFE and DEMONIZED by the end of 2016. I bought shiny new cover art, wrote new blurbs, and excitedly announced that this was definitely going to happen.

It hasn't happened, obviously. Mostly because I have a loooooooooong to-write list, and re-publishing old stuff has to take a back seat to writing current series. And now it's a year-ish later and I'm no closer to getting these books back out in the world.

I have a really on-off relationship with the Shoregrave/Ethan Banning books. Kinda. I love them. I love writing Ethan, I love the world of Shoregrave. AFTERLIFE was my first published novel, and even though the experiences I had with Damnation Books/Caliban Press were...um...horrific, I guess, I still believe these are good stories that deserve to be read. But Ethan is on his own rocky road - long story short, nobody buys Ethan's books - and I can never decide from one week to the next if I want to put more time and energy into series that don't sell, no matter how much I may love them. Because, as noted, I have a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong to-write list.

But. Argh. Unf. Ugh. I do love them. And the mere fact that I'm still thinking about them after all this time and all the various heartbreaks I've had over them, tells me I need to finish what I started with them.

So back to AFTERLIFE. I opened it up yesterday and started reading through. I wrote the first draft of this book in 2008. I like to think I'm a different, better writer now, and it quickly became clear to me that I can produce a better version of this book with a little time and work. I also figured out as I read that I have a solid, focused plan for the series that I didn't have back in 2008, a plan for telling Yasmin's story in a satisfying way, and that means some changes are required. I'm planning to work part-time on getting AFTERLIFE up to scratch whilst dedicating the bulk of my writing time to my current Amber Morgan wip.

After that... I want to submit it to my publisher. Self-publishing requires a skill set and a budget that I don't have, and I don't see the point of putting this book back into the world if I don't give it the best chance of being found. For me, that means working with a publisher. I hope they'll like it...If not, I guess I do still have that cover art.

As for Ethan, that's a blog for another day, I think. Still a bit of thinking to do on that guy.