Spent the evening working on Rebecca. It’s really hitting its stride now, I think. All the major themes are introduced one way or another. The main character is well established – love her or hate her – and I’ve written a couple chapter endings that made me just stop and ponder, a little sickened and a little elated. I always figure if my own writing is making me draw up short, I’m doing something right.
There are two primary supporting characters, and one of them gets introduced in the next chapter. So I feel like I’m making real progress in that respect, but more importantly…
Rebecca has a lot of themes in it, and I’ve been worried that there may be too many. I’ve debated cutting one or two and making it more of a focused story, like Alex was. The problem is, all the themes really do tie together, so figuring out which one to cut was tricky. This past weekend, while writing, a couple passages occurred to me for the final few lines of the book. I took note of them. They were good… but the reason they were good is that they delivered on one of the themes. This helped me realize which theme was most critical. (Not surprisingly, just like Alex, the most critical theme is a parent’s love for her child.) This, in turn, really helped me figure out what to do with all the other themes.
The overall idea is basically this: the main character, Sarah, is learning how to love her daughter. But she can’t do that without learning to love herself first. And let’s put it this way… there is a lot of stuff in the way of that.
With the basic thematic roadmap out of the way, I feel like the only thing standing between me and finishing Rebecca is time. This is a really exciting feeling. I remember when it hit with Alex, and it was a thrill. Now, I just want to write like a madman until I get it wrapped up!
Speaking of Alex, the past couple days have been a bit depressing. After Alex’s awesome performance last week, sales just plummeted the past few days. I couldn’t help but notice that this coincided with the book’s drop off of the horror bestseller page – both in the “Top Rated” section on the right, and the list itself. I’ve been trying not to freak out about this. I figured what comes up must come down, and if it went up once, it can probably go up again. The recent revelations with Rebecca also help me keep this fluctuation in perspective, because I have something to direct my energies toward besides obsessively checking Alex‘s sales. : P
Good news, though. Alex is back in the “Top Rated” section for horror (for the moment, at least)! It’s up to 54 reviews and still holding a perfect 5.0/5 rating. Interestingly, I noticed this not because I’m checking the horror bestseller page constantly, but because I suddenly sold three books, and I thought, “Huh, I wonder if…” and sure enough, there it was. : )
If you’ve read Alex, enjoyed it, and helped me out with a strong Amazon review, I can’t say it enough:
Thank you.
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