Faith Awakened becomes A Guildswoman’s Dream: The Why

It’s been six years since I self-published Faith Awakened. Print on demand was a new thing then. I learned much from the success of Jeremy Robinson and his unflinching stance on quallity, whether it be in the writing or the design.

So I ran it through about 20 critique partners, took over half their comments on board, had a kick-ass designer do my cover art, learned typesetting, and sent out a bunch of review copies in print, as was usual in those days.

That first edition of Faith Awakened sold about 500 copies in a year. Not bad for a first try, they say. And it got some great reviews. I was happy.

Then, in 2011, Chila read it. Soon after, she asked if I’d consider republishing it under Port Yonder Press, with a little updating and polishing. Sure, I was keen. She understood the heart of my writing and I had also been much inspired by hers. And I am curious to see what can be done by having a publisher on US soil. My little book had gone as far as it could by itself.

We both thought we’d just update the text a little bit. But when we sat down to do so, absolutely nothing would come. Slowly it dawned on me that the entire book needed to be rewritten. I am not the writer I was at 21 when I began that work, nor the one who published it at 28. I’m better.

Writing Update, August 2013

I’ve got a bunch of projects on the go right now, so I thought I’d give you a rundown. On the “all mine” side is everything Avenir. I have a 12-part serial that just needs some clearing up of logical inconsistencies (with thanks to Travis for the help!) and then I also have the novel project, Pride and Prejudice in Space, which I’ll probably also attack as a serial for motivational purposes. All of this Avenir stuff will likely be self-published after proper edits.

On the “I have a publisher!” side (yay!), the 2 books contracted to Port Yonder Press are complete and under edits by the fabulously uncompromising Chila Woychik. However, we recently realised that those two books fall towards the end of the timeline I’m writing, as there’s also Cyberdublin—a manuscript I wrote five years ago in Ireland, whbich goes back two generations before the events in A Guildswoman’s Dream (formerly known as Faith Awakened—more on the reasons for that in another post).

So my immediate plan of attack is to revisit Cyberdublin, brush it up to best quality, and if it’s good enough, Chila might publish it under PYP as well. Then I can start thinking about its sequel Space Brain, any possible tales of the following generation, and after that, some origin stories that take us up to the beginning of A Guildswoman’s Dream and A Guildswoman’s Journey (which both run in approximately the same timespan).

Oh, and if Cyberdublin isn’t “good enough”? I think I’ll work on it until it is. Because, you know, there’s not much point otherwise.