Went Back

 It didn't even hurt that much. 

As promised, I unpublished Shadow Song, then went back in and revised it. I was right that there was too much unnecessary back story, a professional hazard of those of us who "pants it". I condensed that into a couple or three paragraphs, then moved on. I also removed the unnecessary history lesson (what was I thinking?) No wonder readers stopped after two pages.

I was happy to learn, however, that the meat of the story is damn good. I enjoyed reading it. I'd sort of forgotten what happened, but it all fell together nicely. I simply need readers to give it a chance. Hence the condensation.

As I write this, I am waiting for my "new" version to go live. I'm proud of this one and I may even promote it (maybe).

The thing that sets Shadow Song apart is the plethora of interesting, quirky characters. I'd actually forgotten about some of them, but they all read as true and each of them is distinct from one another. I'm proud of that.

I have aspects of my writing to work on ~ one is to be brutal with edits. My head was always in that querying space, where an author must hit a specific word count to even be considered, but with novellas the fat can...and should be trimmed.  

I haven't re-read any of my works except this one. I read the preview of New Kaitlyn on Amazon and I know that one is good. I'm always questioning whether my works are as much fun to read as they were to write. With these two validations I'm feeling good. 

It may be time to fire up my Kindle and take a gander at those others.