But I DID take that first chapter of the otherwise unpublishable Fifty Year War and give it a re-work and clean-up pass. I’ve found a few markets that it could fit in as a short story.

What’s funny is how, a few years ago, I felt that chapter was in a pretty solid place. Looking at it now there were so many things– little things, mostly– that I felt could be fixed or cleaned up or written out. Some of the changes just involved streamlining. There were several character and worldbuilding elements that were either dead weight, or unnecessary without the larger context of being part of a novel. I’ll be taking that to my writing group on Tuesday.

I also started the Fourth Draft of Thorn of Dentonhill (Veranix #1). I got some new comments which involves mostly tweaks, but one very critical comment that a certain plot element is not given enough weight soon enough, so when it does finally get some explanation, the reader didn’t care anymore. I’ve now added a new sequence in the first chapter which address that.

Finally, I did some publisher/agent research. That’s how I found out about the above.

BAN01: 4557