Looking Back at Becoming Charity

I let myself have the weekend off from actual writing, thinking I could give my brain a bit of a break.  You see, when I really get going, the scenes seem to play in my mind and it's as though I'm simply a fly on the wall, watching, my hand furiously typing away to get it all down on the page.  Sure, I start out on a new piece with a basic outline for the plot, but that's about it.  I love when this happens.  I'll go back and read over what I have and often find myself thinking, 'wow, I wrote that?'.  Ok, back to that whole giving my brain a break thing.  Yeah.  It didn't happen.  As has become more and more frequent, I found my mind wandering back to the first book I published, The Society: Becoming Charity.  What I was once so proud of has become a literary thorn in my side.

I began writing it nearly seven years ago.  It was a release, a way to deal with some things that were going on in my life.  I had no intention of it being published, ever.  I shared bits on a couple of different sites and with a few friends, and that was it.  Then my friends who had read it began telling me I should look in to getting published, and finally I did.  I worked hard to get the book to a good ending point, found a publisher who would take something that didn't have a romantic sub-plot and that was written in the first person instead of the third.  I was thrilled when it was accepted, waiting eagerly for it to go live.  Then came the second and third books.  It was somewhere between their publication dates that I began to wonder about the first book, started to think it might not be the best it could have been.

It really hit me when I had the compilation book The Society: The First Three published.  I went back through all three to double check for typos, continuity errors, etc.  I found myself reading through the first one and cringing more often than not.  Now, I know most artists are their own worst critics, and that people say you'll never be completely happy with your work.  Since I can be a perfectionist, I set a goal for myself in order to know when a piece was ready for publication.  It's when I can read through and have it be something that I would buy, read and enjoy myself.  I'm a picky reader, especially when it comes to erotica, so this seemed a reasonable goal.  It's worked.  Unfortunately, that goal was set after my first had been published and now I find that it doesn't live up to that standard.  Now, after a long while of thinking it over, I've finally started.

I copied the original content in to a new file and dove in, scalpel in hand.  Overly harsh or extreme scenes will be reworked.  Repetitive scenes will be cut and glossed over.  New scenes will be added to give the book a good, solid plot as well as to allow the characters to become more fully developed.  I refuse to be embarrassed by the book I was once so proud of any longer, and it is my sincere hope that you, dear reader, will not hold this against me.  I was young and angry when it began, and in my determination to be published, I gave you something sub-par.  Believe me when I say I can hear the voices of my English teachers back through the years, and they're all saying the same thing.  "What were you thinking!!"  I am not sure when the edited version will be available, but hopefully it will be soon, and followed by the fourth book in my The Society series, Vanished!

To those of you who actually read the original first book all the way through, you have my thanks and my apologies.  For those who put it down after the first few pages, I understand completely, and I sincerely hope you might give it a second chance when the edited version becomes available.  I'm planning to post some of the edited bits here so that you can decide if it will be worth it to you or not.

Now, enough living in the past!  Time for me to get back to work, the sooner to give you wonderful readers something you can really enjoy!