Today is a very big day for me—I officially finished the first draft of The Fiercest Chicken in the Bookstore. There are parts of it that I love, and parts of it that I will love to edit, but at least it exists. I always tell myself that anything can be fixed, but you can’t fix what doesn’t exist.

This is the third novel for which I’ve completed a first draft. My first novel Syntarian, I didn’t think it was worth editing and making it good. I’m sure I could have, but…it would have required such rewriting that I didn’t think it was worth the time.

But I think it’s probably pretty normal for one’s first attempt at novel writing to not be that good. Experience is very important in developing all skills. And I definitely learned a lot from Syntarian, as far as what to do and what not to do.

Sometimes, I’ve considered publishing excerpts from Syntarian here. I don’t think it’s publishable, as a whole, but there are bits of it that are very entertaining. Really, when I write, I’m always going for entertaining. I leave the poignancy, the nuance, and the heart wrenching to other authors. I just want to entertain and write things that are fun.

I didn’t mind editing Somewhat Alive. I don’t know if editing is something most writers like or not, but I didn’t mind it. It took me awhile to figure out how I want to do it, but once I figured out the process, it was pretty painless. And it did make the book much stronger.

I think I felt more confident at this stage in Somewhat Alive. After I finished that first draft, I sort of thought I had something with potential. I still think it does have potential, actually, but I think it’s less attractive to agents right now, because the covid has insisted on dragging its feet and mutating again.

A novel about a global pandemic that includes a virus that mutates into a zombie virus and starts the zombie apocalypse is probably just a tad too plausible these days. I started writing Somewhat Alive in 2019. Just saying.

The Fiercest Chicken in the Bookstore contains no pandemics or horror or sci fi content. Just pure, sweet, wholesome romance. It’s meant to be a lighthearted, fun escape from the real world. I hope everybody else loves it as much as I do.

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