Meredith Mansfield, Author

I’m having a lot of fun with my rewrite of THE SHAMAN’S CURSE. I’ve never stopped loving this story or the characters. The execution the first time I wrote it–now that needed a lot of help. It’s amazing as I use the original written in 2008 as a very extended outline.

Wow. Dialog mechanics. Yeah, I didn’t understand that at all. Obviously had no idea what a beat was or how to use it. (For non-writers, a beat, in this context, is a bit of action or body language paired with dialogue which acts as the dialog attribution as well as allowing the characters to interact with each other and the environment. It isn’t necessary to use “he said” for every single line of dialog.)  Showing vs. telling. Yes, I have a much better handle on that on several levels.

I may be having too much fun with this, though. I’ve been playing instead of doing the harder work of planning the launch for BLOOD IS THICKER.

Blood Is Thicker Cover

I may have to push the launch date out to compensate for this. I also haven’t done what I need to on promoting FIRE AND EARTH.

Writing is just so much more fun and it goes fast when you have essentially a 100,000-word outline to work from. That’s the good news. I’ll have this first draft done in record time.

I suppose it doesn’t hurt–could even help–to take a little break every now and then. But I seriously have to force myself back to the work that is outside my comfort zone.

Meanwhile, you can read the first five chapters of BLOOD IS THICKER free on wattpad.