It’s been a busy ol’ 6-8 months here in writerland. At the end of last year, we were humbled and honored when one of our YA short stories, The Place That Will Keep Us, was published in the 2013 Momaya Annual Review. Not only that, they were lovely enough to give us the third place prize! Most of the time you feel like you’re writing in the dark, not knowing AT ALL what anyone thinks of what you’re doing, whether anyone will like it or respond to it. So getting published in Momaya was a wonderful feeling. When you’re a writer, these kinds of moments form the string of lights that help you through the darkness.

The story is set in the southwestern U.S., and focuses on the son and daughter of a guitar player who are forced to go on the run and fend for themselves as they travel up into the midwest. So naturally, when we decided to adapt it into a movie script, we set it on an alien planet. With aliens. What else were we gonna do?! 🙂 We finished the script a couple of months ago, giving it the full YA sci-fi polish, and we’ve been sending it around. Fingers crossed!

Fear not, we’ve also been working on the sequel to ALTERED. Which, as of right now, is *this close* to being finished! It’s going through final edits now while we get the cover design finalized. This is always an exciting time — editing is when a book truly comes to life.

Once you’ve gotten into the actual editing, that is. Staring at the completed manuscript for the first time can be a bit nerve-wracking. In fact, the moment between the end of the first draft and starting editing is totally that bit in Empire on Dagobah where Luke faces his deepest fears and sees Darth Vader.

Facing your unedited manuscript. Scary, it is.

However, fortunately, then comes the actual process of refining, honing, cutting, adding, excavating, elevating, and many other “ings”, the end result of which is a book that you feel hopeful and excited about (as much as your writerly neuroses will let you, anyway).

So it’s all systems go right now; because, of course, book three is already calling!