Greetings Fright Fans, Fiends, Freaks, Perverts and Sickos and welcome back once again to the House of Master Vyle blog. As I suppose many of you have guessed already over the past few months I have been releasing the second edition of my first novel, Heather's Journey Volume One: The Sound of her MASTER'S VOICE. My initial intention had been to release the novel in paperback, however the overall length made it impossible to publish the book in a single print edition without the text being so small that the only way it could be read was with a magnifying glass. Of course you may remember that I had hoped to deliver that print edition in 2014...
...And that's where the horrors of editing rear their head once again.
Sometimes when you have a book, despite loving it like a child, it's just so hard to re-read it again, and again. Once I had the novel broken into two parts and had the proofs on my desk the one thing I dreaded was reading them over for a final, fine tuning, edit. I resorted to reading and taking notes during my lunch breaks at work, and that was when I felt like it. The issues the book had were pretty minor (probably due to the other 30 odd times I had read it from start to finish), yet it took me nearly a year to get through from beginning to end. And even once that was done I sat my notes aside and did not launch myself immediately into the task of making the edits. I was pretty burned out, and I had mentally begun to wrestle with myself as to whether I wanted to release the book in a two part edition, or if I wanted to break the novel into the four individual books within it. Since it had begun availability as chapter by chapter installments online I really did not want to break it up at all. This was one story, one novel (a really long novel, but still one novel). Enter procrastination.
Now, of course, procrastination was not my only problem. My youngest son, Quentin, was in his final years of high school, his junior year an experiment with virtual schooling that was a headache and a nightmare, so I had to deal with that. I was also producing and editing episodes of my LiveStream shows, as well as helping to run and moderate chat nights on The Peninsula of Horror. In July of 2015 I suffered a two week bout of migraines. My Dad passed away in August, and immediately after that I found myself purchasing a new house. So my writing had a reason to be on hold for a while as we packed up a decade's worth of stuff and left our stuffy 1,500 square foot house for one nearly double the size.
Once we were settled in the only writing work I did was on scripts for House of Master Vyle Presents. There was an adjustment period once we moved in. Disharmony caused by my family. It was Quentin's senior year, so I had to pick him up every day so that he could finish high school in the one he started with (you know that one with the waiting room to the faculty offices bigger than Darth Sidious's office). And of course as graduation neared he informed us that he wanted to move out of state. So for first 14 months in our new home I did no writing outside of my hosted horror show scripts.
Finally, after my the lady vyle and I had a chance to settle into our larger and now empty nest, I picked up my notes and began the last edit on The Sound of her MASTER'S VOICE. It only took two weeks to finish what I had put off for the better part of two years. The edits done I made the decision to go forward with the somewhat serialized, four part, version of the novel. It only took me a couple of days to do the final edits, and then a couple of weeks to get each of the four parts formatted for their print editions. I also updated the initial two part release I had planned for the book, and will probably offer them at a later date, as well as with the updated eBook edition, which will have a broader release than just Amazon.
One of the problems I feel that I had when I began offering my stories as eBooks was that I was too excited by the prospect of having them available to a wider audience and jumped right into having them published, instead of doing all the fine tuning, because once I read the Kindle version of the first edition of The Sound of her MASTER'S VOICE it was pretty apparent that it was full of mistakes. Other people have told me there was nothing wrong with it, but there were problems and despite the fact they were so spread out that most people were not picking up on them I knew they were there and was appalled. So despite having the proofs in hand in the early part of 2017 I decided that I would release them one at a time, one book on the first of each month, beginning in April.
The Horrors of Editing? Yes, that wait was torture, but in the end I think it was worth it.
The Horrors of Editing? Yes, that wait was torture, but in the end I think it was worth it.
Okay, so I know what you're thinking. The first book came out in April, yet the first blog post about it is coming one week into June. I had plans. Huge plans to go all out in promoting the release and working to update, revamp and post about the impending release. However, at about the time I was getting ready to do that I suffered another bout of migraines, smaller ones in March and a never ending one as April began that sidelined my from work for over a month's worth of time. So my promotion was limited to posting an event for the release on das Booken and updating it with book tidbits and site releases as they occurred, and when I felt up to it.
So, yes, again, we're over halfway through the releases for The Sound of her MASTER'S VOICE and I'm just now getting to writing a post about it. As you can see I shall also be releasing a second edition of A Day in the Life of Abagail King, which I decided to edit at the first of the year so it could have its first print edition as well. I really do intend to keep this blog up to date and a lot less neglected as it has been as long as my time and my health are willing.
As far as what the future will bring in relation to my writing, I am trying to be on a wait and see basis. I have had so many ideas for stories and plans to have them done in a certain time in the past which I jumped the gun and set release dates to, all of which to date are still incomplete. So, from now on, I'm not planning or predicting the release of anything. When the story is ready to go, I will release concrete information as to when you will find my next novel or collection.
Until then, I'm back (here) and I plan to be as vyle as ever.
See You After Vyle,
Master Vyle
