witter (ˈwɪtə)
vb – (often foll by: on) to chatter or babble pointlessly or at unnecessary length
n – pointless chat; chatterCOLLINS ENGLISH DICTIONARY – COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED, 12TH EDITION 2014 © HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014
First of all, thank you so much to everyone who shared about the Bound Beauty Cover Reveal! I’m so excited for the winners of the raffle giveaway and can’t wait to share the lovely new editions of Craving and Scarred with you! Bloggers and fans alike shared on their media and we also had fun chatting up our favorite versions of Beauty and the Beast. -a topic which never gets old to me 🙂
And in case you missed it, here’s the new cover by Najla Qamber Designs!
Prism Book Tours hosted, as they’ve so enthusiastically hosted every book in this series. A thousand thanks, Lara & Tressa! Your support for this series has given me encouragement and hope when I needed it most. If you don’t know the lovely ladies who run Prism Book Tours, you’re missing out! Go check out their blogs and enjoy the bookish love they share 🙂
Writing and re-writing the Wylder Tales as you know them today has become a journey in my career I’ll never forget. The lessons I learned, building upon each book, weaving words and worlds, has helped me with my current project in unexpected ways.
Two months into 2018 and I have floundered with finishing up Silver Hollow P4. Thankfully the muse has returned! And I am making words again or in some passages, tracks revisiting past scenes and slicing and dicing like you wouldn’t believe. Why all this effort? Because I’m out to build up a legacy here. I didn’t just want to set out to re-release an updated edition of Silver Hollow. I wanted to breathe life into a brand new series, the series I wanted to start in 2012. You’ve heard me say before, I had delusions when I stared like oh-so-many newbs. I thought I could write what I wanted. There would be time for sequels later, and maybe I just wanted to write stand-alones for the most part? Well, older, more market-savvy me knows better. I know I missed my window by not fleshing out the potential Silver Hollow had.
I began revisions of my first novel hoping to polish it to my satisfaction. Now I find myself essentially writing the version I wanted to write then. If I sound too George Lucas a’ la Special Editions, never fear! I’m planning to leave the original hanging out on my website (and a dozen “free ebook” sites that live under the radar…). But for the Borderlands Saga I’m preparing to write, you won’t want to miss this new edition.
Another reason I wanted to bring up legacy is to talk about the Wylder Tales Series. At one point, it was only going to be a two-parter. I believed this up until I wrote Wolfsbane’s Daughter, then while diving into Scarred saw even more potential to explore this new world. I decided last year to make this an ongoing series. ‘Course, I could finish Bound and realize that is the best ending. But I don’t think so because there are still so many stories I want to tell.
Sometimes we begin a series and it’s like Pandora’s Box. We unleash so much more than we bargained for. This is how I felt while writing Scarred (good Lord it was such an easy book to write) and knew I wanted to explore what happens “after Happily Ever After.”
Bound Beauty has undergone three different transformations already. I took what began as Bound last year and the Extended Edition of Scarred Beauty was born. Because while I loved Scarred and it was easy to write, it wasn’t quite as good as I knew it could be, not as complete.
I’ve read reviews (some authors don’t, but I like hearing the good and bad) where people have said Craving was lovely in its prose, but fell flat in other areas. Scarred, I believe, is a much stronger story, but then one person shared they felt there was no character development. Being the seasoned newb I am, I took it all with a grain of salt and made notes. Each book I write is a learning experience and I don’t discount anything my readers say because it shows me areas I can improve.
I opted to release Tamn and She Walks in Moonlight last year instead of Bound and the new Silver Hollow because…well, choices, for one. I don’t have the budget to produce four books in one year. Though that is a lovely thought. But also, after releasing Scarred too soon, I discovered it’s almost always better to wait.
There is this ingrained fear a lot of Indie authors have, where if we aren’t releasing more novels more quickly, we fall into obscurity. I get it, I really do. I don’t wanna “disappear,” but I’m at the point in my career where I will not produce trash. Rather, I won’t give you anything but my best, whatever that may be at the time
While I’ve focused wholly on Silver Hollow so far this year, the new version of Bound is a handful of chapters + outline, written and waiting. I hope the lessons I take from bringing together the behemoth that is Silver Hollow ’18 will aid me as I tackle my third Wylder Tales. Meanwhile, I hope you love me or at least love my characters/world enough to stick with me as I figure things out. We can only eat an elephant one bite at a time as my dad likes to joke and he’s right. One chapter, one book, one series at a time. We’re building a legacy that will endure in the years to come. And oh yes, I do mean at least the next ten at least.
Stay tuned for the Stay Kindle sale, news about my serialized novel, Angel Blue and more writerly witterings 😉
Jennifer Silverwood 