Yes, addition by division is definitely the way to go. I am proceeding with the plan to divide The First Proving into a trilogy: Emergence, Knights and Watchers, and The First Proving. The neatest part of this decision is its James Kirk-like appeal; when it’s taking you forever to complete your first book, just change the rules and decide that you finished the blasted thing WEEKS ago! I don’t believe in the no-book scenario! (Non-trekkies, google “Kobayashi Maru” and you’ll get it).

So I did some heavy editing in order to make Emergence a standalone book that begged the reader to continue onto the next entry. I pulled in some text from what will now be Knights and Watchers and stuck it into the final chapters of Emergence. I did NOT make any changes to the glossary (did I mention the extensive glossary before? Sure hope so…), which means that there are likely people and places listed in it that don’t show up at all in Emergence. Oh well.

I have been struggling a bit with the one-word title, though. I played around with a few other potential titles for book 1, but nothing else grabbed me. All of the other planned books have multi-word titles, but I have decided to perhaps let it go.

Once I was satisfied, I shipped the 300 page Word doc off to FedEx-Kinkos and had them print out a bound editing copy which is now sitting here on the kitchen counter. I am freakishly happy about it. But now the hard parts; proofreading, then letting people read it!

Oh, and I have begun sending out query letters to literary agents just to see if any of them bite.  To support these queries I have written a synopsis for The First Proving trilogy and the entire rest of the story arc. I managed to get it into about 3 pages. What’s killing me is that it contains ALL of the spoilers! I really hate having to give away all of my plot twists (there are lots of them). I guess I should get used to that though.

It is SO nice to not be overly concerned about the agent and publisher part, but let me tell you, I will be psyched if any of them even ask to read the full manuscript! Of course, if they do I am going to have to race to get the blasted thing proofread, huh. Luckily they all advertise that they send out their rejection letters… I mean responses… within about 4 weeks. So no real rush there, huh.

I think that I will post Chapter 1 (Pithwood) here in the blog just to get it out there and get feedback. It’s not one of my favorite chapters, but it gets the action started pretty well while introducing the first two characters – Argand and Kosin.

Stay tuned!

~Kevin