Want to know a secret?

My upcoming novel Buried Secrets is almost ready!

Writing Buried Secrets has been an exciting journey and an informative and interesting ride and I value all of the lessons I’ve learned along the way. I’m happy to share my story writing process and publishing experiences in future blogs.

What started as a simple idea sparked from a course I took from The Write Practice called the 100 Day Book Challenge (I highly recommend to any aspiring author), Buried Secrets has evolved tremendously over the past two years.

I first began this journey by coming up with a few ideas for stories and wrote a sentence for each one. Next, I asked family members and friends to honestly tell me which idea was most intriguing and why. The premise for Buried Secrets won almost unanimously. From there, I made a commitment to write each day for 100 days straight, adhering to a daily word count I’d agreed on. On Fridays, I submitted my story, one chapter at a time to a community of writers for critique and in turn, I critiqued some of their stories.

At the end of 100 days, I had a very messy but at least written first draft of about 80,000 words and I was so excited and proud. I hired a developmental editor from The Write Practice to read it and the feedback she provided was invaluable. Over the next year, I revised, re-wrote and heavily edited that draft and once again submitted it weekly to an online writing community. I added all of their feedback to a Google Doc and then, spent a few months revising, rewriting and editing. And right before my eyes, I started to really see this story evolve into what I had imagined from the start.

Finally, when I felt that my manuscript was almost ready, I sent it to several beta readers who took time out of their busy schedules to commit to reading Buried Secrets and got back to me with what they thought about it. Wow that experience was amazing! It helped me to see what was working consistently and what still needed tweaking and I happily took much of their advice.

Here’s what’s happening now:

• Buried Secrets is in the hands of my editor, Megan Basinger. By the end of January, I will have the final polishing completed!
• My cover designer, Rebecka Jager is working closely with me on the ebook and paperback covers as we speak – and I’m loving what I’m seeing!
• Once editing and cover designing are complete, Buried Secrets will be formatted to prepare it for publication.
• I’m aiming for publication this Spring 2020 and I will keep you posted!

Thank you for following me on this journey! Look for more information in the upcoming weeks! Please feel free to comment below.