And so it begins the grueling and tedious process of editing. Okay, so maybe I’m over exaggerating with that statement because so far, it’s really has not been that bad. I officially started this process yesterday, April 5th, and just finished the edits on the 3rd chapter today. Oh, and while I’m talking about editing, I need to take the time to mention to you all just how much I LOVE my editor, Scarlett! This woman is Amazing. Not only is she good at what she does, but she is also very warm and caring and so easy to work with. I can honestly say now that she has become my friend and I’m looking forward to this journey with her.

So backing up again to this whole editing process and how it’s happening. Okay, even before that, I wanted to mention that I officially sat down and started writing this book September 28th 2013. I wrote my very last sentence on March 26th. Six months and almost 63,000 thousand words later, Raven’s Innocence was born.

After I finished the last sentence of my book, I felt completely elated! In fact, I jumped up from the computer and did a happy dance. I wanted to run outside and shout to the world, I DID IT! IT’S DONE! Instead though, I stayed inside and chanted that over and over again throughout the house and then let my friends and family know I completed the book. Yaye for me! Pat myself on the back! Woot Woot!!!!

And then reality smacked me in the face, this is only the beginning. My book is far from done. Sitting down and writing the story, that was the easy part. That was the fun part. Developing the characters, especially Raven and Grant, and giving them life and meaning. Watching the story unfold in my head and come alive on paper. I loved every minute of that. And each night I sat down to write a little more, I thought I knew what I wanted to say, but most of the time, once my fingers started dancing across the keyboard, my story would always take off in another direction. I never once made an outline and tried to follow. I sat down and started to write and I let the characters and their lives evolve in my head and blossom a little more each night.

Now comes the hard part of it: Editing, formatting, marketing, publishing, launching, and more marketing. The first three chapters of editing have been smoother than what I expected, but I must give credit to Scarlett for that. She introduced me to Google Docs and I LOVE IT! So easy! I have been uploading my book chapter by chapter then sharing them with her. She goes in, tells me everything I did wrong, and then I go back in and make the corrections. After my part is done, she goes through them again. I also love how we can be looking at them at the same time and use the chat feature to discuss. For anyone who has not ever used Google Docs, please try it. Seriously, it’s totally worth it!

Since I have finished writing the first book, I am missing the writing process. I already have the second part of this series written in my head, and even an idea for the third book. I want to get back to writing, STAT! But that will come in due time. Right now I need to focus on getting this first book ready to publish.

One suggestion Scarlett made to me was to keep a diary and blog about my experience through this publishing process. So here I am, and it keeps me writing something. I’ll do my best to keep everyone updated through this. I just might post a few more unedited excerpts as well. I also have a couple of more ideas to blog about, but I’ll keep those to myself until I’m sure about them. I don’t have an exact date I am aiming for to launch Raven’s Innocence, I have an idea of when I want to, but wanting and it happening are two different things, so mum’s the word until I get closer to that. It will be very soon though!

For now, I’m going to shut down my computer and give my brain a break. I’ve been editing all weekend and now this. I hope that I didn’t sound like I was just rambling on above, but if I did I apologize. I truly am mentally exhausted. Xx

~N~