Bye, Bye Brain!

It's now official:

What used to be "Book 1: No Regrets" has been divided into TWO books, dubbed "Volume 1" and "Volume 2" of the Legacies Series. "Volume 3" is still called "Family Portraits" at this time, but that is subject to change, depending on if I decide to use a theme for the titles for the whole series.

Yes, it's now a trilogy instead of a two book series. This is at the suggestion of two of my betas, my best friend/Peapod and one of my local best friends. It's to make the series more appealing to my future audience and to make it easier for publishing, either through a publishing house or self publishing if I go that way in the future with it.

Today saw the removal of a lot of passive areas from what used to be "No Regrets" (the name of it has changed to something else to keep the full names down). Volume 1 saw ten pages of stuff removed and Volume 2 has lost eleven pages so far, and I'm not done yet. I have a lot more editing on the way for that part of the series, like compressing the wordier areas, taking out repetitive stuff, removing any other parts my betas suggest, and even rewrites - like taking one area out and putting a shorter, more plausible scene in its place, like my local beta reader suggested in a couple of spots in Volume 1.

I've skimmed over Vol. 3 (Family Portraits), highlighted what was glaringly obvious for passive areas and wordy spots, and I'll be going over that one again sometime soon - in between getting the first two parts of the series cleaned up and working on Eleven's first draft.

Another thing that I had a lot of in the first two installments were quotes from various songs by a certain local band. Those have been removed, and I've inserted half of a song at the start of Volume 1, and the rest of it at the start of Volume 2. I was told that the quotes were too distracting and that putting some or all of the lyrics from one or two of their songs at the start of each installment was much better. I do have permission to use the lyrics from the band members (I've known all three of them for over 20 years!), and I'm trying to decide which song to use at the start of Volume 3. I have an idea on which one will be used - well, part of it at least - and will be inserting that quote into the start of that story after it hits "Revamp Stage 2 mode", when I start removing all of the extras from that manuscript.

I'm looking at both and wondering if I've lost my cotton picking mind....

On another note, I was alone for a couple of hours this past Saturday and once again, I managed to get another 1400 words added to Eleven's main file. I'm at the start of Chapter 3 and it went a little better than previous writing days. I had a very long talk with myself and just WROTE... And it seemed to work! Things are starting to come together a little better now that I know where I'm going and staying out of editing mode while I'm writing. I hope this continues...

I have a full writing day coming up later this week and I hope to get more added to Eleven, along with getting more out of the way in the Legacies series cleanup.

Have a great Monday everyone.