Several people on Facebook wanted to know if I was going to try to publish that first Elizabeth book, now that I'm editing it. One woman asked, if this was submitted by one of my students, would I encourage that student to pursue publication, and I said certainly -- after quite a bit of editing. As corny and embarrassing as I'm finding this first attempt of mine, I've certainly read worse. And after all, it was good enough to get me an agent. Several editors who turned it down said they liked the writing but felt that the first book of a series needed to start in the protagonist's home ground (the mountains), not on vacation (the beach.)
(I'm pretty sure pages I'm working on now are an earlier draft -- I must have gotten got rid of some of the stupid errors before sending it to an agent.) At one point there was some thought of my reworking this and letting it be the third or fourth book in the series but at this point it just wouldn't work. In this book Elizabeth meets Phillip for the first time -- contradicting the backstory in SIGNS IN THE BLOOD. And even if I got rid of Phillip, there are so many other difficulties . . . But I'd like to find a way to make it available as an e-book, really as a curiosity piece -- not trying to make it fit with the already published Elizabeth books. I'll look into this, after I finish the edit. I have no idea about how to do it. The edit, by the way, is revealing that I pretty much made EVERY mistake a beginning writer makes. But I'll save that for another post . . .
