So, on March 12, I had a telephone conversation with my publisher. In it, she laid out the weaknesses she saw in book two of The Dream of Asarlai. She didn’t have any issues with the story I’d presented, the way the plot developed or anything like that. Her concerns were character based, and pretty much boiled down to two things: a) we need to see more of Maggie and Lucas, the main characters from book one, and b) Mark, Ione’s brother needed to be developed more because he felt a bit plonked in there.
At the same time, my heart sank and ideas started to pop. It involved a lot of re-writing, but could also provide a whole lot of interesting developments and potential for drama.
Once the call ended, I sat down and started making notes. Solving the Mark problem seemed fairly easy to me – introduce him earlier in the story in a much calmer, more friendly scene so that we can get more of a sense of him and his nuances before he cracks its and causes his poor sister no end of grief.
As for bringing Maggie and Lucas into the story, the obvious answer lay in the very strong friendship between the two women – I just needed to up the ante a little in a couple of places, have Maggie and Lucas become Ione’s support network for that time and bam – problem solved.
The answer lay in a dramatic event that occurs in the first quarter of the book. In the earlier version of that story, that event didn’t impact on Ione that much. It didn’t take too much tweaking for it to have a major impact on her and force her to go stay with Maggie and Lucas for a while (ah, computers – even in world of magic, they’re a pain in the arse).
However, that caused another issue – this event was what initially brought Ione and Stephen together when he went to stay with her. How was I supposed to have that relationship developing when Ione wasn’t there any more?
As often happens in writing, the solution to that problem lay in the direction I’d decided to take. By having Ione more severely impacted by the event, an immediate connection between she and Stephen developed (he was also badly affected by it). It helped take their relationship from initial attraction to confidants very quickly, and meant there was a tie between them even though Ione wasn’t there. All I then had to do was play on Stephen’s good-boy nature and have him offer to have Ione back there at night time if that was what she wanted and bang – I had Ione hanging with Maggie and Lucas during the day, then developing an increasingly intense relationship with Stephen at night.
I opened up the colour chart of the scenes in book two and noted the ones where I could change setting or the other characters involved to incorporate a faster introduction to Mark and spending more time with Maggie and Lucas and then I was away. I did spend a moment to mourn Ione’s Uncle Ian, who was a feature of this book at the beginning and has now been consigned to the dustbin. Sorry Uncle Ian, but Maggie and Lucas take precedence.
With those changes done (echoed all the way through the book), I then had a change of my own to do. A scene that I had planned to put into book three wouldn’t fit, so I decided to put it into book two. That ended up being a brilliant thought – with it, the search for the forbidden texts ends on a real cliff-hanger that will, I hope, have people clammering to get their hands on book three.
That will be compounded when they read the very last scene. I’ve gotten rid of the original scene and have put in the opening scene from book three instead. It fits with the changes better, and provides yet another cliff-hanger. Honestly, I think that apart from Ione and Stephen having their Happily-Ever-After *sigh*, readers are going to be gagging for book three.
Now, to polish and then fire it back at my publisher and HOPE LIKE HELL that she loves what I’ve done as much as I do.