THREE BOOK DEAL

Hey there fellow writers and readers. Been awhile hasn't it?

Alright yeah...been a long while. To be honest ever since I started my semester in New York I've been completely off the wagon. Or maybe my lackadaisical blog updating started with Junior year? Whatever the case, its been quite the year, hasn't it? A little over a year ago, Hour of Mischief was officially published. My debut novel! Pretty crazy huh?

But more crazy than that was what I did on the anniversary: finally signed my three book contracts for the rest of the series with Curiosity Quills Press. That's right. The rest of the Clockwork Gods series is officially HAPPENING!

Book two is entited SEASON OF WIND and follows Janet and her crew on their continued quest to rescue their friend Sylvia--at least until Itazura gets himself into trouble and Janet is thrown back into godly politics. Its a book that takes the characters to new parts of the world, show cases more characters, divine and mortal alike, and of course has the same vaguely sarcastic sense of humor than infects all of my books.

I can't give a summary for the other two books of course. That might give a few spoilers. But I'm super excited to work on the series with my publisher and get them into print.

And as I do all that, I am going endeavor to regularly update my blog again (twice weekly, hopefully). Starting with completing the heroes series which has taken me a literal eternity to get through. Then I plan to start a series on what I learned from interning at two literary agencies New York.

It should be a fun and exciting school year (my last school year in fact) and I'm looking forward to it. As always, happy writing!

HOUR OF MISCHIEF RELEASE DAY!

Hey guys! Guys! Guess what? HOUR OF MISCHIEF officially comes out today!

I mean... wow. I never thought I'd get to this point. I dreamed of it but I never really pictured it so clearly in my head. Even when I did, I always thought of this day as some far off date. But here it is. I'm freaking out.

This book never could have happened without the help of so many people. My friends, my family, my agent, Laura Zats, my critique group, my publisher, Shared Worlds creative writing camp and all my mentors through out the years. It takes a whole lot of people to make a book. So I thank all of those people who made this happen for me.

And if you love Young adult fantasy, check out HOUR OF MISCHIEF on amazon today. Thanks as always for reading!

http://www.amazon.com/Hour-Mischief-Aimee-Hyndman/dp/1620079429/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1441637585&sr=8-1

HOUR OF MISCHIEF COVER REVEAL!!!

Its here, its here, its here! BEHOLD, the amazing cover for HOUR OF MISCHIEF~

I've been obsessing over this cover since I first saw it two months ago. Its absolutely gorgeous and really captures a lot of the aesthetics I wanted. Also, green never hurts :)

You can preorder it for your kindle as well here. Not yet a print copy. I'll let you know when those become available if you're holding out for one of those. Other than that, spread the word far and wide! Add it to goodreads. I really appreciated it!

Happy Monday everyone! And happy writing along with it.

Cover Reveal Monday!

Hey guys! No normal blog posts this week, obviously. This week has been really busy. Yesterday, I flew into South Carolina to work at Shared Worlds for the second year in a row. If that name sounds familiar, its probably because I've talked about it A LOT on my blog.

Shared Worlds was, of course, the fantasy based creative writing camp where HOUR OF MISCHIEF began. I owe my soon to be published status to that camp, the instructors and my fellow students. I love going back to work there now.

And speaking of Hour of Mischief, don't forget: the cover reveal for the book is on MONDAY, July 20th. The book also goes up for pre-order that day so be sure to order a copy. It would make me super happy :)

But if you don't have the money, at least join me on Monday to squee over the amazing, AMAZING cover art. Its awesome guys, really.

Until then, happy writing!

Edit 1: Plot and Story Structure

Well, since I just did a post about my 10 round editing system and I'm now implementing said system on my manuscript, I figure I might as well blog about it as I go. If I do one edit a week, my manuscript might be well edited by spring. And when it comes to the smaller edits, I can probably do multiple in a week. So let's get this MS into shape!

Today's edit focuses on Plot and Story Structure. As mentioned in my previous post, this is the most involved edit of the story. It involves adding scenes, deleting scenes, switching scenes around, and even restructuring the entire plot. How well the plot is thought out to begin with determines the difficulty of this edit.

In my case, this edit isn't as difficult as it could be, mostly because I'm a die hard outliner. I outline before I ever start writing and usually my plots stay about the same. I don't start writing unless the plot seems feasible and is well paced in my head. So I usually don't have to restructure a lot of the meat of the story.

With the exception of openings.

Oh openings. You devils you. I cannot for the life of me write you well the first time. There is nothing more difficult to me than writing an opening that is well paced and gives just enough information to hook in a reader. The only time that I have written an opening that I have liked from first draft to last is in HOUR OF MISCHIEF. I guess its no wonder that's the book that got me my agent.

I'd been hoping for the same magic with the sequel, but nope! It looks like I'm going to be doing a lot of fixing and restructuring on the first fifty pages. I guess I should be used to it by now.

Me guzzling water and pretending its alcohol. Cause I can't drink...yet

This edit will also involve me adding scenes because at only 58,000 words, the book is shorter than I want it to be. Adding is almost as difficult as cutting sometimes, so I'll be combing through and seeing where I can add scenes and character developing moments. Though I'll focus on the latter more in my character developing edit.

So what about all of you? Which parts of your manuscripts always need the most reworking when you edit? Anyone else hate openings like I do? Let me know in the comments and happy editing!