Today’s post will not be about my dating woes (there goes half my readers). There is literally nothing to report there. It’s not like doctors where no news is good news. No news means simply that I’m unpacking that crazy old cat lady starter kit later today. (Now, where did I put those scissors…)
No, today I dive into day three of editing my latest book: Enigma.
This is the book that I started to write some time ago. You may remember this was supposed to be the human side of the now defunct Netherworld. You can read about what happened with my co-written novel, Netherworld here. I started working on that ‘human’ version as soon as The ABC’s of Dee was released.
The plan had been to take the human I had created in Netherworld and have him not meet a Banshee but to just meet a mysterious human instead. Not paranormal, just mysterious. Fantasy isn’t selling like it once was, so I was tasked to write my own genre. Should have been easy, right? Well, I tried. I really, really tried. I got out about 50,000 words of trying. You know what I found? I didn’t like my character outside of the world I had already put him in in Netherworld. I tried re-naming him, changing his location but it just didn’t help. My character lived in Netherworld, not anywhere else. I didn’t like the character I created.
So, I started over. Filed it away as a project that taught me about what forced writing looks like.
Does that mean Netherworld can be released now to the indie market since the traditional book market didn’t bite and I didn’t re-write my half? Well, not so fast. My co-author of the book, Amy Miles, and I have put that idea on a WAY back burner. She has noticed that fantasy isn’t really moving in the indie world either, so it wouldn’t be smart to release it now, especially since we haven’t written the other two books to go with it. When we wrote the first book, our schedules were open enough to fit the other two books in fairly quickly to satisfy readers. However, time has moved on. Amy is a full time writer and is now booked solid for the next two years with contractual projects. I have none, for the record. *cough.
So, on a dusty digital shelf it will sit, where it may or may not ever see the light of day.With two years of writing, editing, tweaking, I just couldn’t bring myself to pull one of the characters out of that world. To do that, guaranteed not only his, but the book’s death. I’d rather have him remain whole, in the world he was born in, even if that world goes unread.
The only thing I retained from the first re-write was a female character. She became the real voice behind Enigma. And she has a lot to say.
I have no idea when it will release as I have promised this one to my agent to shop out in the traditional world, and one thing I’ve learned, the traditional world moves much slower than the rest of the world.
Until then, I have Penned Con to prep for and a book to edit. A book which will go to some pretty dark places that I’m still debating how much of that darkness I want to share with readers. Editing is where I get to learn what writing the book is trying to teach me. It’s the hardest part of writing for me, and also the most rewarding. Diving in. Head first.
Danielle Bannister, Author 
I didn’t know what had happened to Netherworld. That’s sad and a little disappointing. I was really looking forward to that one. 🙂