I've spent some days tearing my hair out, convinced I can't make No Evil Star do what I want it to. Every time I look at the section I'm trying to edit, I get bogged down in all the ways it could change and can't work out where to start. I had decided to give myself a couple of days off, give it a rest, then come back to it with fresh eyes over the weekend. But I still wasn't particularly enthusiastic.

Then I received an email from Dreamspinner Press. They've taken Warrior Pledge! I'm so excited I'm bouncing.

Warrior Pledge is my cat shifter story. It's been rewritten so many times I barely remember where it started. I kept persevering because I loved the story. I just had to find the right mix of plot elements - there are always too many - and the right point of view to write it from. Structure was a big problem with this story too. I wrote it in a three act structure but it needed to be a Hero's Journey.

So now I have two stories I'm working on. Last night I received the pre-production documentation to complete for Warrior Pledge, and I still need to finish No Evil Star and get it to Beta readers.

This weekend, I'll finish the pre-production documents and send them in, and I'll also redo the map of Thalazar I created when I was writing Warrior Pledge. It was created for one of the early incarnations so there are a few changes to be made. I'll draw it on better paper so it looks more professional. I've posted part of it here. The names are now different and it has more information than it really needs, but you can see what the country looks like.

I'll also work on at least one section of the edits for No Evil Star. It's going to be a busy weekend. :)

I'm still editing No Evil Star. I'm down to the last dozen notations that something has to change but I didn't do anything on it today. I know why I've left those last few things to the last.

They're hard.

They're the kinds of things where I need to read back and forth and find exactly the right spot to drop one or two words, then do it again for another few words, then again and again until the picture has built up gradually to give me the impact I want. The constant scrolling up and down and reading, or skimming, makes it really easy for me to lose track of what goes where and what shouldn't be there at all. I just know I'm going to end up with an unreadable mish-mash of rubbish that's worse than the original was.

Or, it could be brilliant.

Meanwhile I'm really enjoying my new Surface tablet computer. I have a nifty stylus that I can write on it with. It's enough fun that I almost enjoy editing. Almost.