My Thoughts Exactly
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Just a little background info about Triangle and how I put the story together.
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So grateful for the keen eye and support of this wonderful editor!
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Please contact me if you would like to “in” on the creative process. It takes a village.
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I hired a new artist to help create a theme for the entire series. No more looking for a new idea each time.
How it started…
The original “portal” into weirdness was a hole in the wall. It was through that hole I got my first good look at the young emo Cure fan we all came to know and love: Persephone.
I just started writing about it. The event. The girl. Eventually, I knew I needed other characters. I knew someone was going to be in love with this dream girl. That person was going to be willing to walk through fire. Then it was only natural to have a balance. Lucky and Jack were born.
From around 2005, I started playing with these characters and places. Their world grew. More and more characters came. Things took shape. I wrote about 150 manuscript pages while I was still in the Navy.
A few years later, I worked and reworked parts of the story in classes at Columbia College Chicago. I still didn’t even have a title. It was just the “Lucky and Jack” story. Keith had been there from the start. Something about him being that first observer seemed important. But then he disappeared for the length of a Bible. It was in those classes that Latasha was born. She was just a random girl at a convenient store getting hit on by a guy. I don’t even remember how or why I decided this totally unrelated character became “the Girl at AM/PM”.
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Night Owl Fiction
“Where is Triangles?” I hear them clamoring in my dreams!
The manuscript is finished and typed up.
I always do my first draft of a story (long or short) by hand. My first revision is when I transcribe my manuscript to digital format. All further revising and editing takes place on the ole laptop.
Clocking in at 91365 words, Triangles isn't as big as I thought it would be. Not that it really matters, but Triangle 1 (as I call it) is 90721 words. Of course, this is still a draft. The likelihood that something is missing is more plausible than too much is there. Just my guess.
Night Owl Fiction has been instrumental in my progress. Smart and perceptive and professional. I’m confident this installment is going to be the best damn teenagers fighting aliens novel it can be.
We are wrapping up the editing process with Triangles. Last time was damn near a year-long struggle. Some of it required rewrites. Some, just a little touch here and there. I skimped out on the content and copy-editing before, doing re-reads over and over again by myself, each time more shocked that I found an error, inconsistency, or typo with very little developmental feedback. In addition to being time-consuming and painful, it left me with a seed of doubt that I didn't do enough or find every 'mistake' or whatever. I'm not going to do that this time around.
I feel good about it.
Thanks MJ!
Advanced Readers:
Feedback is very helpful to a writer. If you would like a peek behind the curtain, sign up for my email list, and I’ll include you in early drafts of upcoming projects. You might even get your name added as a character.
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Triangle Treatise Cover Design
Keeping with the tradition of ‘making shit up as I go’, I’m in the process of changing up the look of the series.
When I was writing T1 back in 2019, I didn’t have any plans for the future. Wasn’t sure if there was series potential or if I would ever write again.
The result for T1 and T1 was that I had different formatting, different art styles—so not a consistent "image” for the Triangle brand.
So, I hired a pro. Ace has been great.
We’re going with this new monolithic layout. Each book in the series will have a different central image but they’ll all follow the same overall pattern.
You know, like a book series.
some other ideas that didn’t make it