Technically, Book 1 is a re-release which begs the question: why does it have a different title? This project came to my mind in stages. At first all I planned to do was clean up the book and send it over to my editors. The problem with was I could barely bring myself to open the document. As I’ve said before, I was proud of the book when it was first published but I’ve learned a lot since then. I knew it was a mess and by the time I got to Book 11 I knew there was only one choice and that was to rewrite it.
At that point I didn’t have a new plot yet or have a clue where to begin but I started thinking about aesthetics. There was a two-year gap between when I published Book 1 and Book 2. In the beginning, I didn’t think about continuity between the covers. I have no clue why it simply didn’t occur to me to make anything cohesive from book to book. But my cover artist created Book 2 and then carried the same fonts throughout the rest of the series. There was no question that Book 1 needed to join all the other little books and get a cover which suited the D’Vaire series.
I started trying to imagine what it should look like and it led me inevitably to the title. Of all the books I’ve written the first one was the hardest to name. It eventually wound up being known as Grand Redemption. Grand for Dra’Kaedan’s title and Redemption referred to a couple of things. I won’t get into the specifics since I don’t want to put any spoilers in this post if you haven’t read the book, but the reality is in Book 1 the idea of redemption in any avenue is only in its infant stages. For some aspects it takes many more books to achieve that redemption and for others it still has yet to be fully realized.
So since I had to have a new cover it was time for the book to get a title more suited to the characters and the story. As soon as I cast off the idea of keeping it as Grand Redemption it immediately became clear what the title should have been all along. I think you’ll understand why I say that if you take a chance on Dra’Kaedan and Brogan and read their story. If you are familiar with the D’Vaire series you already know!
Once I had the title, I had a ton of research to do. I needed to figure out what I could remove from the book and what had to stay. I don’t keep a book bible as I have notebooks full of crap and refer to them instead. So I put together a spreadsheet and thoroughly checked every story I’d written to that point. I had one column for things present in the ones already published and another for those still waiting in the wings. If it was in something not yet unpublished I was more than ready to edit it out of a future story if I thought Dra’Kaedan’s Coven would be better without it. I had fun creating the spreadsheet, so I decided to share the layout with you.
After the spreadsheet was done, I started ripping out large portions of the plot. I didn’t know how I was going to replace them yet but then I woke up one morning and literally the entire story was right there in my mind. That’s never happened to me before, but I grabbed a pen and started writing so I could make an outline later. Though there are portions of the story that remain, there’s not a line in this book that wasn’t scrutinized intently to improve it and that was before it went to my editors! If I was going to take on a project like this, it needed to be done right. I’m very happy with the way it turned out and I hope everyone else feels the same way!
At that point I didn’t have a new plot yet or have a clue where to begin but I started thinking about aesthetics. There was a two-year gap between when I published Book 1 and Book 2. In the beginning, I didn’t think about continuity between the covers. I have no clue why it simply didn’t occur to me to make anything cohesive from book to book. But my cover artist created Book 2 and then carried the same fonts throughout the rest of the series. There was no question that Book 1 needed to join all the other little books and get a cover which suited the D’Vaire series.
I started trying to imagine what it should look like and it led me inevitably to the title. Of all the books I’ve written the first one was the hardest to name. It eventually wound up being known as Grand Redemption. Grand for Dra’Kaedan’s title and Redemption referred to a couple of things. I won’t get into the specifics since I don’t want to put any spoilers in this post if you haven’t read the book, but the reality is in Book 1 the idea of redemption in any avenue is only in its infant stages. For some aspects it takes many more books to achieve that redemption and for others it still has yet to be fully realized.
So since I had to have a new cover it was time for the book to get a title more suited to the characters and the story. As soon as I cast off the idea of keeping it as Grand Redemption it immediately became clear what the title should have been all along. I think you’ll understand why I say that if you take a chance on Dra’Kaedan and Brogan and read their story. If you are familiar with the D’Vaire series you already know!
Once I had the title, I had a ton of research to do. I needed to figure out what I could remove from the book and what had to stay. I don’t keep a book bible as I have notebooks full of crap and refer to them instead. So I put together a spreadsheet and thoroughly checked every story I’d written to that point. I had one column for things present in the ones already published and another for those still waiting in the wings. If it was in something not yet unpublished I was more than ready to edit it out of a future story if I thought Dra’Kaedan’s Coven would be better without it. I had fun creating the spreadsheet, so I decided to share the layout with you.
After the spreadsheet was done, I started ripping out large portions of the plot. I didn’t know how I was going to replace them yet but then I woke up one morning and literally the entire story was right there in my mind. That’s never happened to me before, but I grabbed a pen and started writing so I could make an outline later. Though there are portions of the story that remain, there’s not a line in this book that wasn’t scrutinized intently to improve it and that was before it went to my editors! If I was going to take on a project like this, it needed to be done right. I’m very happy with the way it turned out and I hope everyone else feels the same way!
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