Not after like three chapters. Not after the opening. Not even at the halfway point. I was sixty thousand words in, man. And I absolutely hated it.

It wasn’t the content I hated so much as the reason behind the rewrite. It was my goddamn characters again. They’ve taken on a life of their own, I swear. Each of my characters is very strong-willed and powerful and intelligent, and now I fear they’ve become self-aware. I argue with them, and sometimes they win. Which is how that manuscript made it to sixty thousand words to begin with. But I finally put my foot down. Enough is enough. No means no. I don’t know what it takes to keep them in line.

It’s going much better this time around. I’m about twenty-one thousand words in again (which is the reason for the delay since my last post. Sorry!) and the picture is much clearer. My lead character Shane was trying to do too much. But that’s my fault. I made him too powerful. Of course you try to take on the world when you actually can, am I right? Eh? Am I? I’m right. So that’s why everything was getting to muddled up. Not only that, though. It was turning into a romance novel. I have no problems with romance. All of my books have romantic elements. It’s one of the baser emotions any human can feel, or want to feel: love. That’s why it works. But Shane, being the charismatic, silver-tongued devil (wink wink) he is, wanted to focus more on the skirt he was chasing that the bad guys. Yeah, I said skirt. I’m bringing it back. And he’s not just a devil. More like half-devil. More like quarter-devil, actually. But that’s all you’re getting.

Anyway, I had to reel the romance in and give Shane more depth. He was the cliché super-hot, super-awesome-at-everything hero. All the ladies wanted him, all the men wanted to be him. Not so much anymore. There was nothing that tied the audience to him. There was nothing that made you care. No flaws, no backstory. But I fixed it. He’s now my favorite character I’ve ever created, which is a bold statement if you know me, and how much I absolutely love Invidia. Gods, she’s the best. Ok, ok. It’s close between the two. I’m not sure anyone could replace Invidia, actually. Shane is pretty awesome, though. I’m excited for you all to meet him. He’s the kind of character that really makes you look forward to writing each day, and hopefully in your case, reading.

The action… This next series is going to be way more action-y-er than my first trilogy. Station and Consequence: Absolution is setting the bar pretty high, anyway. Both with the action and the character development. I surprised myself with Shane. And the intrigue. Absolution has a few more layers of intrigue and plot development than what I’m used to working with. The scope is wider. It’s grittier. You’re going to feel more. You’re going to see more.

So, as much as I hated scrapping sixty thousand words, my characters showed me what I was doing wrong. This rewrite is much better than where I was going with the broken manuscript. Well, not broken. That might be a little harsh. It just wasn’t the direction I wanted to go. And I think my characters knew that, and were warning me away. I think that’s why they were being so difficult. That’s what I’m going to tell myself, anyway.

Thanks for reading!

Kyle