Regaining Home
Aug. 4th, 2009 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alanajoliDon't forget to to post about your Muse in MtU&E's first contest before the deadline on Saturday!
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I've been putting this off and putting this off, because I think some part of me was really hoping for a resolution other than this one. It looks like WhiteSilver Publishing, the company that published Into the Reach and Departure, is well and truly vanished. That means that Regaining Home, the third novel in the series, really never will come out as a published book. (Due to its being set in the setting for the Chronicles of Ramlar, and being the third in a trilogy, I can't see taking the draft to another publishing house and expecting that it would go anywhere.)
We'd started the editorial process on the novel back in the summer of 2007, when we originally expected the novels to come out fairly close together. Those edits were put on hold when WhiteSilver first started to have problems. So what I have is the pre-edited finished draft of Regaining Home. Because there's no possibility of my ever being paid for the novel, I'm not inclined to go through the whole editorial process (despite the fact that it would give me another chance to work with the fabulous![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
smerwin29) or solicit artwork for a cover (despite how much I'd love for Lindsay Archer to do another cover for me). But because I wrote the thing, and because I ended Departure on a cliffhanger, I'm not inclined to let the book just rot on my hard drive, either.
I've gone through a number of options since I started to suspect that this was the inevitable outcome, and the idea that I've pretty much settled on is releasing the draft of the novel on my home page, where people could read it for free. (Stephenie Meyer released her draft of the unfinished Midnight Sun on her home page, so there's at least a precedent, though obviously for very different reasons.) The writing isn't polished (because it's a draft), and there are things I'd change if I were going back to seriously work on the project (because it's a draft), but it is an end to the story, and despite all it's problems, I want it to exist.
So, that's the plan. I'm still working on details (such as format for release -- just as html, or as a download? -- etc.), but I'll announce here when it goes up. If other folks have released their fiction for free on a novel-sized scale and have advice to offer, I'd love to hear it.
--
I've been putting this off and putting this off, because I think some part of me was really hoping for a resolution other than this one. It looks like WhiteSilver Publishing, the company that published Into the Reach and Departure, is well and truly vanished. That means that Regaining Home, the third novel in the series, really never will come out as a published book. (Due to its being set in the setting for the Chronicles of Ramlar, and being the third in a trilogy, I can't see taking the draft to another publishing house and expecting that it would go anywhere.)
We'd started the editorial process on the novel back in the summer of 2007, when we originally expected the novels to come out fairly close together. Those edits were put on hold when WhiteSilver first started to have problems. So what I have is the pre-edited finished draft of Regaining Home. Because there's no possibility of my ever being paid for the novel, I'm not inclined to go through the whole editorial process (despite the fact that it would give me another chance to work with the fabulous
smerwin29) or solicit artwork for a cover (despite how much I'd love for Lindsay Archer to do another cover for me). But because I wrote the thing, and because I ended Departure on a cliffhanger, I'm not inclined to let the book just rot on my hard drive, either.I've gone through a number of options since I started to suspect that this was the inevitable outcome, and the idea that I've pretty much settled on is releasing the draft of the novel on my home page, where people could read it for free. (Stephenie Meyer released her draft of the unfinished Midnight Sun on her home page, so there's at least a precedent, though obviously for very different reasons.) The writing isn't polished (because it's a draft), and there are things I'd change if I were going back to seriously work on the project (because it's a draft), but it is an end to the story, and despite all it's problems, I want it to exist.
So, that's the plan. I'm still working on details (such as format for release -- just as html, or as a download? -- etc.), but I'll announce here when it goes up. If other folks have released their fiction for free on a novel-sized scale and have advice to offer, I'd love to hear it.
