Adventures in Crafting with Words

First up, why am I expanding and revising The Bookworm Next Door?   At first I seriously thought that The Bookworm Next Door (BND) was complete.  I had been working on it for over seven years and the overall story never changed.  I've had so many possible endings, but I kept coming back to the one I ended the story with.  Then I hit publish and the prequel short stories started appearing.  Then the questions of "what happened to Aimee?" Kelly?  What about Jennifer?  Wesley?  Gloria and Brady?  That was when I realized that BND wasn't finished.  What is different about the current Bookworm Next Door and the revised and expanded edition? Over a hundred pages of new material.  What caused Grace to be shy and quiet when she's the oldest of X number of siblings?  What caused Aimee to set her sights on David? Some names have changed.  A Beta reader pointed out that she was having trouble keeping Grace and Gloria...

As promised... the cover reveal. Stay tuned for more later.

I took a bit of a break.  Went camping. Waited impatiently for Betas to finish reading and making their comments. The good news is that one Betas has finished and has submitted her edits and comments.  Final reviewing begins tonight and the new version od The Bookworm Next Door will be released soon. I just have to decide how I'm going to do it... Stay tuned, readers.  Cover reveal and release date coming soon. A

Sometimes you sit down and realize something. Okay.  I sat down and realized something as I was writing Jennifer's part of the Bookworm story. The Bookworm Next Door wasn't finished when I self-published it.  It's a disturbing reality that faced me with two difficult decisions.  I could close the door on The Bookworm Next Door and leave it imperfect or I could rewrite it and make it perfect. I decided to do exactly that.  Perfect is better. So then I was faced with the daunting task of piecing everything together exactly the way it needed. There was also the fact that I was faced with continuity issues with some of the characters names.   Last night I finished The Bookworm Next Door.  It has all of the short stories combined.  It has new material.  It has a never before seen ending that only I knew was going to happen. Is The Bookworm Stories Series over?  No.  There's still Aimee Kirkland's story.  Grace and Kyle....

Is that even possible?  Can Aimee Kirkland from the Bookworm Stories Series be redeemed?  She isn't supposed to be a likable character.  She's one of the mean girls that everybody sees in real life.  That girl that believes that she deserves it all.  Did she learn anything from The Bookworm Next Door ?  Did everybody rallying around Gloria in Along the Road teach her anything about her actions?  But as I released Along the Road and got started on my next installment - what is supposed to be Jennifer's story - I started my outlines and plotting... but Aimee kept popping up.  And then her unnamed sister - now named Amanda.  So, when the Bookworm Series moves out of the high school area and into the college arena we'll see more about Aimee and Amanda and how these sisters deal with their mother's influence in their lives.  Can Aimee be redeemed?  What is going to happen to be the catalyst for this redemption?  I don't k...

In all three books I drew inspiration from my local area. From the high schools I'd been in. The high school layout for The Bookworm Next Door was the high school I attended.  It had - counts - 5 parking lots. One for the theatre/football stadium, football locker room/weightroom, administration, North Campus/baseball field, and the front Student/Staff parking.  Six if you count the softball field.   So while Mr. Wallace's (a math teacher I actually knew, who once taught at my alma mater, but not when I attended) car would be parked near the North Campus/Baseball field in staff parking hidden by the Foreign Language portables, David's car could easily be overlooked in the crowded Front parking lot.   By the way, my high school also had 5 buildings. Are all,  they say "write what you know" and using actual locations helps. Half-Moon Manor and Keeping Secrets are both in the same county.  This county in fact has 4 school districts.  3 city/...

At some point I going to need to learn how to work photo editing to make these better.  But it's something and I think it looks pretty good.