Meredith Mansfield, Author

Just a little while ago I typed the magical words “THE END” at the bottom of the last page of MAGIC AND POWER. It came in at just under 75,000 words. Yeah, this was the story that was going to be short, a novelette (7,500 to 15,000 words). It’s rough, but, hey, that’s why they call it a rough draft. It’s time to close that file and let it rest a little before coming back for revisions to smooth that roughness out.

So now I’ll turn my attention to other revisions for a little while. I’m getting my middle grade fantasy, MAGE STORM, ready for my critique group next month. (That’s not that far away, now.) I’ll take another pass through BLOOD IS THICKER, the sequel to BLOOD WILL TELL. And, meanwhile, I can let my imagination play with that weird Oz story and try to get enough of a handle on it to plunge in and write that one.

I think I have a pretty good idea of the world in which this story takes place (think of it as a Jurassic Park version of Oz). What I need to develop more is the main story line. What is it the character wants? What does she need? How do those two conflict? And what will she have to do to get what it is she wants? It’s the conflict that drives the story forward and I need to have a grip on that before I start.

Meanwhile, new chapters of FIRE AND EARTH and BLOOD WILL TELL are available free on wattpad.