Kathleen E Adams

Wow! I have not posted in a while (Since January 15th!). Oops.

It has been a very busy start to the new year, and I have battled several colds and illnesses and allergies. It’s also state testing season for my high school students, so work has been extra busy.

Between all the work of teaching (ugh, it’s so much!) and spending time with my family (love them but also a lot of work), I have barely squeezed out time to continue writing and revising. And now that I have a WHOLE book, it’s not easy to do quick edits in Google Docs on my phone. It’s also tricky because if I make one change somewhere, I likely need to change something else somewhere else. It’s a game of dominoes that is not fun.

I also went through a real slump for a while. It’s hard to be confident in your own writing and to believe in yourself enough to sacrifice the time and energy needed to write AND keep in the right headspace to be creative. Forcing myself to write when I’m not feeling it does not produce great writing. If I’m really lucky, I’ll occasionally get ideas from my dreams, but usually it requires a lot of mental effort.

Every time I read an amazing book or see a new one drop, it’s hard not to give up on my WIP. Who wants ANOTHER fantasy book? another romance? another mermaid tale? another retelling of Greek myths? another fairytale?

But my amazing friends and family have cheered me on, and I am determined to finish. It will be unique because it’s mine, and even if no one else loves it as much as I do, I am happy to write this book for myself.

So, since “finishing” my book and setting my new goal to finish revisions by the end of January, a lot had changed. I thought I was almost done (insert evil laugh here and a narrator’s voice-over saying “she had no idea how wrong she was….”)

Updates

Siren Rising is now around 100,000 words in length. But, I have made some major changes and still have more to make, so I am not sure exactly how many words I will end up with: somewhere between 95K and 110K. But it doesn’t really matter how long it is as long as the story is complete.

However, that being said, I do want to go back and use the word count to help my map out my pacing and check for any issues with something like a chapter that’s too long or a a big lag in action or too many POV switches at once or the climax comes too soon or too late or whatever.

There is always something more to refine and perfect. It’s way more intimidating trying to revise and improve a book than to just write a first draft. I thought the initial writing was hard, but once again, I was wrong.

So, what’s different? A lot and yet nothing. It’s still inspired by the idea that the little mermaid was actually a fierce warrior siren, and the fairytale got it wrong. However, it’s a little more traditional fantasy than romantasy and I dropped attempts to make it enemies-to-lovers. I love that trope. Again, Pride and Prejudice is one of the best books ever. And I always argue that the enemies-to-lovers trope began with Cupid and Psyche, one of my favorite myths.

But that trope just didn’t work here, and that’s fine. Letting that go let me embrace the fairytale concept of love at first sight, and I think that’s been a better fit for the book.

Additionally, I have added a lot more Greek mythology and other characters to the book. Obviously, I couldn’t write a book about sirens without using Greek mythology. We have all read The Odyssey (or at least some it in high school I hope) and Odysseus’ famous encounter with the sirens.

So, I still have a siren who is mistaken for a mermaid. I still have a fairytale romance. I still have a charming prince.

I will write about more updates and additions in the next post. In the meantime, you can follow me @KathleenAdamsE on Instagram for more!