So, it’s officially official. But it’s also a long story, so I’m going to go back to the beginning.

After I wrote Sing, Sweet Nightingale, I wanted to get to know my second main character better. This sparked an idea to write some of the scenes in Sing from his perspective. Like most of my projects, this turned into something a lot longer than I’d anticipated–longer than Sing, even–but I liked it a lot and it allowed me to get a much better understanding of his character and his background.

When the editing was about to start for Sing, I sent the editor this second story (which I’d titled The Damsel in Distress) just as a source of extra information about the world I’d created. “There is a lot of extra background information in here,” I told her. “If you feel any of it should be included in Sing to help round out the story or explain some of the idiosyncrises of the universe, please let me know.” So she read it and then sent me an email that essentially said this: I think you should turn these two stories into a novel.

A small part of me was kind of sad to hear that because I’d been SO proud of myself for finally writing something SHORT! However, this didn’t last long. The novel extension is an idea that had actually already passed through my head. Since I’d been trying to publish it in short story form at the time, I didn’t give the fleeting idea much thought. With this push however, I started to seriously consider the possibility of heading back to the drawing board:

I started messing around with ideas and, not surprisingly, ended up with more than I’d bargained for. In fact, I have a solid new beginning for the extended version of Sing (I like the title, so I’m keeping it for the novel). For those of you who have read the past few posts, this is the NaNo project I’ve been pumping through so forcefully. It’s kind of taken on a life of it’s own and therefore taken over my life. I love it when this happens!

The plus side of all this is that I’m working on something that I really think could be great. The downside is I’m back where I started from on the whole publication process. Have to get the draft done and edited and then resubmit to a few places. Well, no one ever claimed becoming a writer was an easy road to walk. Here’s to hoping that inspiration + perseverance (+ a little good luck) = publication