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Getting out of the Draft: Anna Castle on Drafts, Revisions, and Working with Me!

Recently, I had the privilege of working with Anna Castle on a developmental edit of the first novel in her Elizabethan mystery series. Afterward, Anna wrote an article for the Capitol Crime Writers blog about the many drafts her novel has been through and what she has learned during the process. She had some lovely things to say about me, and I thought her observations and experiences may be helpful to other indie authors. Here's an excerpt from her article. Click the link below to visit her blog and read the full article.

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Today, Friday the 13th, December 2013, I begin the last revision of Murder by Misrule , the first in my Francis Bacon mystery series. An auspicious date!

I started this book with a plot-a-thon at the end of 2009. Misrule was my fourth complete manuscript and third mystery novel. (The first two mysteries will become books 1 and 2 of the Lost Hat series. The first book was an historical romance doomed to obscurity.) I felt like I was getting a grip on this novel-writing game. I’d been reading Elizabethan history for a year or so — enough to get rolling. I believed this was going to be the book that sold, so I decided to keep keep track of my progrest. My goal was to start being efficient about producing books. Like good scene in genre fiction, I met conflict (time, over-planning, a series of new editors) and failed to achieve my goal. I learned a lot, though.

Click here to read the rest of Anna's article!