Confetti

You guys!!! I did it!!! Ahhhh!!!!!!

 

Ehem. Sorry. But I did do it, and by it, I mean finish my first round edits of The Guns.

 

I'm so stinking excited right now. It's the first time I've ever actually sat down and edited an entire first draft, and I'm really happy with how it turned out.

There's a few minor things I need to go back in again and fix- couple of typos and things like that, but overall its a pretty decent looking story right now.

 

Also, to my great dismay, Jarod and I never actually went inside the Irma Hotel in Cody. It was chuck full of people when we were there, and my husbands hates people more than I do, so we didn't go in. Which is a problem, because most of the story takes place in that building. Obviously, I've looked at pictures online, so I've got a decent idea of how to describe things, but I need to *gulp* call them. I need to know what kind of locks are on the hotel room doors. Because if they still use a key, I'm all good, but if they switched to the electric card swipe locks, then I'm in trouble, because the power is out in my story and I'll have to go back in and delete any time it says Cole locked the door.

 

I've known about this discrepancy for literally weeks now, and I still wont pick up my phone. Ah, social awkwardness, my old friend.

 

But anyway. The story more than doubled in size from the original, and the story line and characters have all changed so much. I think their development was much better the second time around, and Cole really started to embrace his inner awesome.

 

Calgary was already awesome, but she got awesomer. It's a word, spellcheck. It's a word.

I improved on my bad guy, Dermott. Not sure I'm completely happy with how he's turned out yet, but I'm getting there. He just...He's  bad. He's very bad. And I have an idea of why, I'm just not sure its strong enough yet. I want him to give me shivers.

 

I'll get there though. Right now the plan is to take a break from it for a couple weeks, and let it simmer, get the flavors all working together and so forth.

 

Then I'll go back in and fix those little mistakes with a clear brain, and then hopefully get a couple more readers to take a look at it. We'll see how much work it needs after that, and go from there, but at the moment I'm not too worried, because I made it through a second draft and I've never done that before.

 

And for all its flaws, I've definitely grown as a writer. There's a lot of fight scenes in the story, and I think for the most part I did a good job of making them intense.

 

I didn't completely butcher the romance thread.

 

And even though he's not shiver worthy yet, my villain is scarier than, say...