Posts tagged ‘Emerald Tablet’
Final draft (sic) of Isis of the Red Mirror Series
It seems like it has taken me almost as long to do the 2nd and 3rd drafts of Isis as it did to write the original draft. But it’s a better book now, thanks to a workshop I attended with Catherine Ryan Hyde on self-editing. We were seven aspiring novelists who bared our souls to the group by bringing the first 25 pages of our books and listening to Catherine read them out loud. I learned a lot about my propensity to use the verbs “was” and “were.”
Some of the chapters have had only one re-write while others took two. I spent almost two days condensing the first 5 chapters to 2. I have gone from 100,000 words to 95,000, so believe you might call that progress.
I also have designed a book cover which acted as an inspiration for me as I wrote. I highly recommend creating a cover and keeping the image in front of you.
Catherine encouraged me to go the traditional route and send out to agents. She told me I needed to get a lot of rejections before I gave up. That part comes next!
The next problem is genre. Catherine intimated that I may have created my own. I’m pretty sure that’s not a good thing. Not really romance because Isis has three gorgeous men in her life that any woman could fall in love with. There is lots of action and adventure, plenty of sex but always with passion or purpose, and lots of information about the wonderful period of history called the Late Period of Ancient Egypt. My goal was to take the reader back and so far, everyone who has read passages from the book, agrees that I succeeded. But it’s not totally historical, because much of it takes place in glamorous Las Vegas. Then there is the paranormal aspect of reincarnation, visiting past lives and the mystery of the Emerald Tablet. I packed a lot into these pages!
I am going to use Sandra Gore for this book. I had thought Sabrina Gee, but it turned out not to be that racy, after all. I’ll put my name on it!
note: If you want to see a photo of the actual Red Mirror, go to The Red Mirror in my pages section: Excerpts from Sex and Zen.
S. L. Gore 
The Black Scroll has entered edit phase
The Black Scroll. A story of black magic and power in Roman North Africa
June 24 was the day I “finished” The Black Scroll. I put ‘finished’ in quotation marks because I’m starting the edit.
But the story is told. It is out of my imagination and now exists in the concrete world of words down on paper. Paper in this case is a digital format, but you get what I mean.
Whew! What a mind-bending experience. I had to pinch myself this morning. I did it! I wrote the trilogy that I’ve envisioned since 2010. The stories of Isis, Athena and Elektra.
There’s been months of hiatus here and there. The Arab Spring starting with Egypt and continuing through Libya. The remix of Isis to Isis Erotica and Isis BeachRead. Family trials and tribulations of late. You know – life getting in the way.
More intricate and involved with a much wider scope than The Red Mirror and The Emerald Tablet, The Black Scroll took a tremendous expenditure of psychic energy to tell. The Romans weren’t nice people. I was juggling memories of four lifetimes with recurring characters. I wanted to wrap everything up – cross all the t’s, dot all the i’s, tie up loose ends.
It’s a longer book, which may or may not remain so after the editing. But I have a feeling it will. The story is complex and action-filled. At least I hope so. It is in my mind, anyway. A fellow author said satisfyingly, “The monumental third volume.” I like the sound of that.
I’ve promised a couple of people to be first readers, and I haven’t forgotten that pledge. I’ll do an edit and then print a few draft copies for distribution.
In the meantime, I’m gonna savor my thrill. There’s not many moments in a lifetime like this.
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June 26, 2013 at 4:55 pm 1 comment