Since I've finished "Monsters of Utopia," I've gone back to look over all the other writing I did in the past couple of years. If you look at the publishing dates on my books, you'll see that "Hold Still the Sky" came out in December of 2013. I haven't published anything since then until Monsters. It did not take me two years to write Monsters. I started a book (see earlier posts) that I eventually called (after a few working titles) "Time Swerve Terminal."
After finishing the rough draft of Time Swerve, I sent it to my beta readers. They were confused by it. And that's putting it nicely. I took in their feedback (without too much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair) and reworked it and reworked it and reworked it. I reworked the book so much it became a different book and I put Time Swerve aside (just for a while I told myself). Then the book that came out of Time Swerve turned into a different book and that book turned into yet another book which turned out in the end to be "Monsters of Utopia."
So, after taking a few deep breaths I opened up the Time Swerve files again. I was pleasantly surprised. In my mind, Time Swerve had become this ugly mess of a narrative. Good, solid ideas but poor narrative flow. Jumping from one context to another without enough linkage to carry the reader along. And all that turned out to be true.
But what is also true is that there are sections of Time Swerve that are damn good. I know. Of course, I would say that. I wrote it after all. But, seriously. There are some good parts to Time Swerve. So I once again (into the breach) am reworking Time Swerve and hope to have it out in the next couple of months.
It will either be the worst book I've written or the best (fingers crossed).
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Monsters is now available in a print version, too. Here's the link:
http://www.amazon.com/Monsters-Utopia-fairy-tale-manifesto/dp/1530643945
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