The Cross of Fire - First Draft

Draft 1 of Cross of Fire is completed. When you begin to carefully analyze such things as character development, timing, cadence, and continuity often some important truths appear - like the one that says its time to rethink the whole thing! This happenned with this book.

What I realized is that the three stories I have written and planned are really a series - The Juno Letters (book 1), Ariele (book 3), and this one... Cross of Fire. Why you ask? - you have to read it to find out.

I made a minor change in The Juno Letters to set up its Cross of Fire context, but it is one that no one will notice who already read the book. When all three books are completed, they will be republished as a series.

I have redesigned the prerelease cover for Ariele and have posted the prerelease cover for Cross of Fire. When the final draft is completed I will commission the cover artwork from my designer.

Buried in draft mode

I gave a talk the other day at a local community college about writing your first novel.  There were about twenty would-be writers in the room and all of them had great ideas, a desire to be a writer, and lots of question.  Not a single one has bothered to actually write anything.

Guess what - that doesn't work.  Telling people you are a writer is fun.  It illicits a lot of collateral conversations, and you find you are in great company.  But one of these days you actually have to put something on paper.  And that's where the fun begins.

Remember all those English classes you hated in school? - paragraphs, sentence structure, word usage.... blah, blah, blah.  When I discussed just how much work editing a draft of your own manuscript is, I was amused at the response.

Writing is creative - editing and publishing is about the craft of writing.  One cannot exist without the other.  Even if you job out the editing, you still need to be the expert, you still need to own your craft.

My best advice - get to work.  Talking about being a writier is not the same thing as being one.

Juno Letters on GOODKINDLES

10 Sept 2013 - I try to discover a new marketing platform once a month.  Today I submitted The Juno Letters to GOODKINDLES - a service that exposes the Kindel version of ebooks to readers specifically searching for Kindle editions.  It looks like a nice site, and I will be watching for results.

In addition, I secured the junoletters.com domain name and will begin the long process of migrating the branding of the trilogy from hewittmbm.com to junoletters.com - the same site, just a different name.

My own worst critic

Yesterday I completely gutted my new story, Cross of Fire.  One of the dualities of creation is the inescapable reality that you have to sometimes destroy what you create to make what you really wanted to create.  Kind of a Noah thing going on.

I reorganized Cross of Fire, and in the process realized I had written over 100 pages and just now was getting to the meat of the story.  When I had the thought - this should be two books - I knew I had to cut.  And cut.  And cut some more.

I eliminated one whole character - kind of like Back to the Future when the photograph changes - and threw away the entire WWI tie in piece.  This forced a change in the major plot vehicle, and elevated a minor character, Gela's boss, to star status.  Half of my research notes went into a holding folder as well as most of the 'snippets' I had already written.  Fodder for future work..

The good news is that it is a better plot.  Also, I have the makings of the next series... I had written about Case Yellow, the attack on Holland, as a part of the story of Mina Pientka, Gela's cousin.  That now will become a new story... a single event (the German assault on the low countires) and three unrelated mini stories stemming from that single event.  The first one is already written... Taunte Truss and Kindertransport (Google it- an amazing story).  I will put these pieces away until I am finished with The Juno Letters series, but will be looking for the other two plots as I go.

I feel good this morning!

The End-of-Summer/Glad to be Rid of the Kids Special!

The Juno Letters is only 99 cents at Amazon.com for your Kindle.

Don't have a Kindle?  Go to: SMASHWORDS and select ADD TO CART.  On the Shopping Cart page is a COUPON CODE box - enter WN96X to get The Juno Letters for 99 cents!

This offer will run through the end of October, 2013.

ONE MORE THING...
If you are an Amazon customer, and you write a review (see the Amazon link above for information or email if you have questions) I will place you on the list for a complimentary pre-release version of the sequel, CROSS OF FIRE - due out in late November or early December.

Email me at: larryh@hewittmbm.com

Cross of Fire Chapter 2 - A Polish Army - now on Wattpad

Chapters 1 and 2 of Cross of Fire are in beta on Wattpad; take a look and let me know what you think:
http://www.wattpad.com/23244225-cross-of-fire-book-2-of-the-juno-letters#.Ug_FbBbx-QZ

I have started a 99-cent promotion of The Juno Letters on Amazon.com through October.  I have requested a feature of PixelofInk to help promote this, but that is never a guarantee.

Last note - I have started getting reviews on Amazon.  Good to see.  If you want to place a review online, please go ahead:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Juno-Letters-ebook/dp/B00CQAU58O

Cross of Fire and D-Day

 © Bram Janssens | Dreamstime.comUsed under license.

Now that The Juno Letters is out and distributed, including the print version, I have been working on the sequel, Cross of Fire - the Story of Gela.  I have a great new cover and am about half-way through the first draft.  I plant to have the second book in The Juno Letters series published in December.

The third book of the series, Ariéle, will be out by late spring in time for the trip to Juno Beach in June.  2014 will be both the 100th anniversary of The Great War (WWI) and the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings.  I have been in touch with both the Juno Beach Center and the commune of Courseulles and am planning to take part in the activities.

More information will follow.  Several readers have emailed me and plan to also attend.  While we will be doing all our own travel and hotel arrangements, I plan to have some sort of get-together in Courseulles.  It will be a lot of fun.

I will post snippets of Cross of Fire when they are edited here on the blog.  I will also take orders for a free prerelease version in exchange for a review, so stay tuned!