What's Up Wednesday #16

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly meme run by Erin L Funk and Jaime Morrow and is a great way for readers and writers to catch up!

What I'm reading

I read Witch Finder by Ruth Warburton. Witches in Victorian England was a premise I couldn’t miss, and it didn't disappoint!

Luke Lexton joins the witch-hunting order, the Malleus Maleficorum, to avenge his parents’ deaths, but in order to gain full membership, he has to hunt down a witch picked at random from a book. He draws the name of 16-year-old Rosa Greenwood, who he has to kill or lose his own life. Rosa, meanwhile, is forced to marry for money, little knowing that her new stable hand is plotting her murder. But when Luke actually meets Rosa, he finds it hard to achieve his goal.

Both Luke and Rose are sympathetic characters and the story completely drew me in. I loved the Victorian setting and thought the author did a great job of making it believable and including just the right amount of detail. The plot races along and kept me engaged throughout. Fans of Cassandra Clare’s Infernal Devices series will certainly love this! 

I also read Fangirl, my first Rainbow Rowell book. I don't read much contemporary, but I loved it! It's sweet and funny and relatable and I was completely drawn into the story!

For review, I read The Prophecy by Erin Albert, one of my writer friends from Twitter! It's a fabulous book, one I'd recommend to any fantasy lovers - look out for my review on the 24th, and find more information here! 



What I'm writing

Well, on Thursday morning (or possibly late Wednesday night; I'm not good with time zones...), I received that Dread Email. Yes - a two-page Epic Editorial Email of Doom for Walking Shadow (Darkworld 2). And yes, it was pretty intense. But I was prepared. I'd long-since resigned myself to a major rewrite, so I had my notes out, diet coke at the ready...and locked myself in the Editing Cave. 

This is the first time I've done such an intense rewrite at this stage of the process, but I was amazingly calm about it, and even opened a new Word Doc for deleted scenes. I think I expended all my worry before my last What's Up Wednesday update, because I've never been so excited for a rewrite! Yes, the words "excited" and "rewrite" don't usually go in the same sentence - or even in the same room. But I decided to roll with it!

And it worked. I understood all the changes my editor wanted me to make, and as this book has given me more trouble than any other Darkworld book I've written, it was a relief to have everything set out in one place. For once, my head was clear and I could see what I had to do. These days are incredibly rare, but I made the most of every second and typed for fourteen hours straight. Two keys fell off my keyboard in the process (though that might be because this keyboard is awful, not because I'm such a hardcore typer :P). But amazingly, I got it done. Of course, I might end up having to do another rewrite later...but I'm not thinking about that now! I rewrote the best part of a 63,000 word book, and now I'm letting it sit for a few days before I give it another read, and prepare to send it back to my publishers... *bites nails*

As for my poor neglected WIP...I'm behind with NaNo. Inevitable, really, after all the editing!


What else I've been up to

Crashing from all the caffeine! :P Apart from that, editing for clients and watching anime!


What inspires me right now

Just having that one day where there was nothing but me and the laptop, and my mind was completely immersed in the world of my story. Days like that have been rare in the past month, an inevitable consequence of the first Darkworld book being out in the world, but just being in the zone, totally involved in the work, and loving it, made all the anxiety go away.

Also, CATCHING FIRE. Who's excited? :D