News about the I'm a Vampire series . . .

UPDATE ON COMPLETION PROGRESS (posted June 6th):

I've got bad news, guys.

I am still working on the revisions and editing for the IAVSW series. I've been working my you-know-what off to try and meet my deadline, but I am just not done. Book one was essentially re-written. The plot is the same, but I had the chance to fix things, so I went for it. At this point, I'm not going to set a firm finish date, because I'm fairly sure I'll end up re-writing book two as well, on top of spending a fair amount of time smoothing out my draft of book three. *Sigh*

My hopes are to be done by the end of summer, but I'm just not going to make promises--except for this: I promise I am working as hard as I can to finish these books. There's a permanent imprint of my butt in my office chair because I've practically been living in it. Sorry if these leaves you with any scarring mental pictures, but it's the plain ugly truth.

Okay, I'm going back to writing/editing/revising/turning into a zombie now. Wish me luck.

Ali

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Original post:

MY DARK LOVE and MY DARK RESCUE are going to be taken down from the Amazon Kindle Store from now until approximately June 7^th(see update above for completion info), at which point I expect to republish both titles. At the same time I'll be publishing the third book in the “I’m a Vampire. So What.” series: MY DARK PAST. Once published/republished, the books will have new covers and will be available for sale at the Kindle Store, the Nook Store, and  iBooks. Since I'll be publishing to other stores besides Kindle, the books will no longer qualify for the lending library... sorry.

My reasoning for unpublishing books 1 & 2 in the series and then republishing them a month later? Well, I wrote the first two books back in 2008/2009, and from that time until now I have had a lot of time to stew over them. As I was writing book 3 (most of which I did in the last two months), I realized that I really want to go back and fix certain parts of 1 & 2.

So that’s what I’m currently doing.

I’m not going to be changing things too terribly much. With the exception of one character, I won't be killing anyone off. Rest assured, the character I am removing is from book 1 and he doesn’t really play an important roll in the 2^nd and 3^rd books. I had intended to do more with him, but as I wrote the last two books I just lost interest in his character. My primary goals for book 1 are: 1) Edit for grammar and punctuation errors I missed the first time around. 2) Strengthen the main character’s relationships with the other key characters. 3) Up the ante in the suspense department. 4) Provide a better, more defined ending to book one.  

I’m not expecting book 2 to change a lot, but I haven’t really gotten to it yet. I’ll come back and update this post when I’ve got more info. Mainly, I’ll be editing for grammar and punctuation, cleaning up the bridge from book 1 to book 2 and looking for plotting boo-boos. I will not be changing the overall plot of the series. So if you’ve already bought books 1 & 2 and you will be still be able to pick up book 3 and read without being terribly lost.

You’ll notice that I said the approximate publication date for the series will be June 7^th, and that’s because that’s the date I pulled out of my head and put into place so that I wouldn’t take another year to finish, but I have no actual idea how long it will take me to finish. I will do everything I can to meet that date, but since it’s only a little more than a month away, I’m starting to get a little worried I might not make it. All three books are written, but editing can be a grueling process. I would really like to do a good job so I don’t have to do it again later. However, I do not intend to let this editing period drag on for another six months. I have other writing projects that I would like to give my full attention to without feeling like I've left a metaphorical light on somewhere.

And now, before I sign off, I’d like to say thank you to those of you who have stuck around to see if I would ever get my act together and finish the series.

So … THANKS!

This just in!

As of about thirty minutes ago, I have completed the draft of My Dark Past--all five hundred pages of it! A lot of it will probably be whittled away during editing, but right now I don't care! I'm just ecstatic to say that I'm done drafting! There were points during the writing process where I wondered if I would ever finish, and I cursed at myself for ever having decided to start, but those moments were far and in-between. Now I move doggedly onto the  task of (dum, dum, dum) EDITING!