Editing Wildwood - aka - Nanowrimo in reverse

For those of you who have never participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month,) the idea is to write a complete first draft of a novel, or at least 50K words of one, in one month. It is HARD, and, to date, I've never succeeded.

So what does this have to do with Wildwood, book #3 in the Moonlit Trilogy? Well, the draft I submitted to my publisher was 156,000 words, and I knew in my soul that it was the best story I'd ever written. It's my favorite piece of the trilogy. My editor agreed: do not, under any circumstance, touch the plot, she said. And then she said: But I need you to cut 57,000 words. Minimum. Really, it'd be better if you could find 60,000 words to cut.

Sixty. Thousand. Words.

Or, NaNoWriMo in reverse.

When I first sat down to tackle this edit, I thought: I can absolutely do this. No problem. I'm wordy and I know it. I can clean this up in a single pass. So I painstakingly evaluated every word, tightened up sentences, cut an expository paragraph or lines three and four of a description here and there. And at the end of the first pass, I had cut 6,000 words. I had also taken two weeks to do it.

Editing a 75,000 word story like Moonlit and Windswept took every brain cell I had. Once I realized I was essentially editing them BOTH size-wise, I buckled down, glared at my screen, and launched into pass #2.

I started seeing some serious word-loving habits. Like descriptions. Boy-howdy do I love to word-draw. Three paragraphs of artsy, flowery page-decor became a sentence or two bold, direct strokes.

I'm a transition-junkie. I quit cold turkey, cutting their heads off whenever I saw them peek up at the bottom of a paragraph. CHOP CHOP CHOP. And boom, without the transition present, the paragraphs flowed BETTER, because if the writing is tight and the motion is streamline, a transition becomes a speed bump.

Full-body feels. This probably accounted for 25,000 words. And I don't mean the way a "feels" moment pulls at a reader's heart strings. I mean the way every single action pulled at every single possible part of my main character (although hearts, centers, stomachs, guts, middles, and mouths seem to be favorites of mine). I shouldn't tell a reader how my character internally responds to a positive or negative moment because the reader should experience the moment without me telling them how to do it.

And, last and certainly most painful for me, expository paragraphs. I love to sink into a scene and roll around, like a dog on a carpet, feet in the air, tongue out, just *feeling* it. Inviting a reader into a character's head space for a good long time. Like a page. Maybe two. I caught myself skimming these words and sections I was sure I loved, and why? Because sure they were pretty but they didn't affect the story in any way so I didn't need to change them so why look at them.

Wait, what?

If a sentence does not affect the plot or the character, if the plot and the character are exactly the same on the other side of the sentence as they were before it, then what was the point of the sentence? The idea of a story is to keep the action and characters in motion. You know what dogs do after they roll all over the floor? They take a nap.

And there was my other 35,000 words.

Finally, one month, 60,000 cut words later, edits for Wildwood were done. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, and taught me some invaluable lessons about the way I write, and how to make it better.

Wildwood now has a release date - September 22nd, 2015, and one truly amazing cover.

I can't wait to see what y'all think of the conclusion to Tanzy's story, and my new, lean, action-packed story-telling skills.

It's been one helluva ride.

Thank you for coming along.

It's been a *head-desk* kind of winter

I am about 40K words into the first draft of Moonlit book #3. I'm not quite as far as I hoped I'd be. After steeping myself in the editing side of the process for months, is very hard to see the forest for the trees again. I over-analyze and tear apart every sentence instead of letting really terrible sentences/paragraphs/dialogue stand where they are as a plot place holder, to be polished during the second look.

I began drafting book #3 in November, and as of two weeks ago (when i was still busy inspecting every inch of bark on said proverbial trees) I was sitting, stalling at about 23K words, and I've probably cut at least as many words already. Now, as a disclaimer, I'm not a die-hard word-count girl. I don't set daily goals. Between my other job, two large indoor dogs, and my nearly 3 year old daughter, the only goal I have is to have a mostly-clean kitchen before I go to bed. Still, I knew I had a problem.

I recently read Stephen King's "On Writing," where he notes he typically does two drafts and a "polish" before submitting his work. And he's a Panster, to boot. I was both mesmerized and mildly devastated by this. I *know* authors all have different processes. But I barely know where I'm going until the third draft. Then it hit me: I am trying to figure out everything all at once in every sentence.

Yesterday, I was perusing one of my notebooks to find where I'd jotted those pesky notes for last year's expenses. I came across pages of ideas for Moonlit book #2, and from the date at the top, I knew I'd made these notes well after I'd finished the first draft. Some of the ideas were good, some were mediocre, some made me cringe. None of them made it into the draft I submitted to my acquisitions editor at WiDo. Not one.

I realized two things: first, that it's a-okay to come up with some really terrible ideas right now. And second, I've become more proficient at spotting and beheading a bad sub-plot before it grows legs and runs away with my main arch. As I imagine happens with killing anything, i have to grieve a little when I realize I've spent my precious window laying down 2000 words to nowhere. Select. Delete. Eat a cookie. Start again.

My hope is by the time Moonlit #3 is ready for beta readers, it will be in a tighter, tolerable place so they can dig into the sentences and conversations and help me chase those down instead of being bogged down by a loose, wandering plot.

Confession: this actually wasn't what I meant to write about at all, but it's apparently what was on my mind. I'll follow up with more on Moonlit #3 soon. :) So what are you working on? How's it going? What do you find trips up your process?

What it sounds like in my head during "official" edits

Quick update: we just finished content, or "overview" edits of the Moonlit sequel, which is currently called "Windswept." That means the plot for the sequel is pretty much set in stone (sqquueee!!!) and that we're moving on to inline edits, where my editor comes after my sentence structure and word choices like they owe her something. And, in fact, they do. She makes sure every word, every sentence, deserves a place on the page once they're finally printed.

In my head, the whole content editing process sounds something like this:

1. Right after I've submitted the manuscript to my editor: I can't wait to see what she says! I can't wait to get started and tear it apart and make it better better better!! (then, this tiny voice says: what if she LOVES it and there's nothing to do? Bwahahahahaha. Hilarious.)

2. Once I've received the edits, I typically glare at the screen - not at my editor's notes, but my own words. How could I have thought this was any good? Why in the WORLD did my publisher accept this novel? There is EVERYTHING to do. Then I dig in and rearrange, shore up holes, apply pressure to the bleeders. Things get better, but aren't sewn up just yet, the fact of which really ticks me off.

3. I submit the first round, and then I avoid my laptop at all costs for fear I'll delete the whole manuscript on a whim and attempt to pick up a new hobby. True story: A week ago I got a puppy because I couldn't handle the down time of two weeks (fyi - that's like super insano lightspeed in the publishing world) between round one and round two. I am an idiot, a busy idiot who is now training a very energetic 4 month old dog.

4. I received the second round of content/overview edits. While the second round is usually lighter, I have found that with Moonlit and Windswept, they make me dig deeper. The first round merely made incisions in the body. The second round probes for the source of the bleed. And boy howdy does it bleed. Everywhere. You'd think by the second round of edits the major cuts were over. Nope.

5. And then, the best feeling on earth: Here it is! This is the giant traffic jam/plot hole to nowhere/personality disorder my manuscript is suffering from. And this is my favorite part, because now that I've identified the offender, I can seek and destroy it faster than that very energetic puppy can rip up a pair of undies. In Windswept, Tanzy opens the sequel with an axe to grind and a very large chip on her shoulder. That big heart of hers was nowhere in sight. The original opening not only made Tanzy practically unlikeable, but also foiled her emotional development in the rest of the story. Tanzy's journey in Windswept has a lot in store for her, and if she's already burned up inside by page 10, we have no where to go. Once I realized I'd plugged the wound in Tanzy's bleeding heart with my own southern-born, grudge-holding, short-fused temper, it was an easy (and lengthy) fix. The story is so much better now that I've taken myself out of the equation

When my editor - who I adore, okay worship... possibly stalk... anyways, when she suggested I soften Tanzy I thought: had she forgotten how Moonlit ended? Wouldn't she be royally brassed off if someone had pulled the pin on the grenade of her life and walked away? In truth, I have no idea how my awesome editor would handle the situation in reality, but I'd also forgotten how Tanzy would handle it, and put too much of myself in the opening chapters. There's a reason I'm not a heroine in a book somewhere.

We still have work to do. In truth, I was a little intimidated by the sequel as a whole. I have fans - actual, legitimate, they-don't-know-me-outside-of-this-book fans. What if Windswept doesn't deliver? What if I'm not good, I was just... lucky? The story line is so different, the pace so blinding... Then I think back to the state Moonlit was in pre-edits, the holes, the weak places, the choppy sections, and I realize we're right on track with Windswept. We still have work to do, and I'm sure I'll stumble around a few times and eat my way out of a writer's block or two. But I'm finally learning all of those steps and feelings and frustrations and breakthroughs are just par for the course.

Sharing is caring: what tips do you have for an author in the editing stage? Tell us about what you're up to, too!

The story of the sequel

The sequel did not at all go like I planned.

For starters, I had to do a major rewrite - scrapping 60K words I'd written before we finished the plot edits on Moonlit, because part of those edits was cutting a character who didn't play a big part in Moonlit, but was spotlighted in the sequel. Oops.

So I began again, and somewhere in there, I got lost inside Tanzy's head and forgot her feet. In Moonlit, Tanzy comes face to face with some of the darkest places of her soul. She even shocked me, and I know she scared herself. So I think we had to acclimate to each other again, who we both were, emerging battle-scarred from the grenade dropped at the end of Moonlit. In the process, we wandered over the choices she made without moving forward. I wasn't really inspired. I was just sad, and more than a little despondent.

Around the time I sent a draft of the sequel to beta readers, Moonlit was making the rounds on a couple of blog tours. I read a couple of feverish posts, new members of the Moonlit tribe who understood Moonlit and Tanzy, and were eager to dive into the sequel, and I started to panic. The sequel isn't right. It's wrong. WRONG. But how? Why? What is missing?? My beta readers felt the same way. They loved the plot I'd crafted, but the fire that lit the "explosion in reverse" fuse of Moonlit hadn't carried over into the sequel. It was a hard truth, but it was the truth.

Then I read a couple more posts from other new fans, and several mentioned how they thought the coming war would play out. ...... war? what war? there's a war? ..... HOLY $#*%! There's a WAR!!! Inspiration struck like a freight train. That night, I gutted the sequel again, saving only about 20K of the original words, and started over.

This pushed my self-imposed May 31st deadline back A LOT. A war between a few people would be boring and over in a paragraph or two (maybe a couple of pages if there's a lot of witty dialogue exchanged between the blows.) So I had to explore all the sides of this war, this brand new, breathtaking, crystal clear moment in my head when all sides converge on the veil. It's a spectacular sight, and I can't wait to write it. But not yet... when you have a WAR on your hands, you have to thoroughly understand each side's motivation, the complexities of alliances and traitors, the gray that exists between good and evil.

I'm so excited to introduce you to this growing cast of new characters. I wrote the first book for myself - to get the story out of my head and to explore Tanzy's voice. But this second book is for my tribe, for those readers who took a leap of faith and dove head first into Tanzy's life and saw the shifting world through her eyes. I want it to be perfect for my tribe. I want to give them what they're hungry for.

Years of working mostly alone around horses inspired Moonlit. But my readers - my tribe - inspired the sequel. I think it's the coolest thing to happen to me since becoming published. I submitted it to my publisher a few days ago, and I'm eager to see what my fantastic editors think. They loved Moonlit as much as I did - even though they helped me work on Moonlit, I also consider them members of the Moonlit tribe. Their opinion means everything to me, both professionally, and as readers. I'll know I did right by my readers if my acquisitions editor gives me the green light. You better believe I'll let you know as soon as I hear back - either way.

Until then, I'll do my best not to stalk my inbox. To keep myself occupied, I'm drafting a scene to add where Tanzy and readers alike will be able to see exactly what Lucas is capable of when someone he loves is in jeopardy...

Enough about me. What are you up to? :)

An editor: the best lab partner ever.

Soon after I signed my contract with WiDo Publishing, I recieved my first email from my editor,  introducing herself and explaining how she wanted my manuscript formatted for her first read-through. I'd heard horror stories about the editing process, and my short-lived experience as a writer in the political arena had instilled in me a sort of PTSD in regards to all red ink. But I was determined to soldier on and be brave about what she might say (or slash and burn.) When I emailed her, I told her not to hold back, and that the only thing I liked sugarcoated was my cereal. Or something to that affect. And then she explained to me what her role in this was: a partner, a side-kick, a sounding board. One edit turned into four, emails shot back and forth at all hours, and we became exactly that.

This is how I know best to explain the partnership between a writer and his/her editor. The process is more like a biology lab and not at all like a biology lecture. Lecture: the teacher stands in front of the class and yammers on for an hour, writing in chicken scratch on a dry erase board. Lab: you and your partner disect things, blow things up, create chemical compounds, mess with DNA, make fruitfly babies (gew.) You get the idea. You get your hands dirty. You get a little sweaty. And you REALLY learn.

My editor disected parts of my manuscript and we blew up other parts together. I started recognizing some of my own bad habits as a writer: my word addictions, redundancies, my reliance on metaphors, my odd way of breaking up dialogue and speaker, my obsession with having characters nod instead of say something. I was also forced to confront the weak spots in my plot and/or writing that I'd mentally swept underneath the stronger parts around it. She made me learn how to fight for my manuscript, and, more importantly, what to fight.

Ten minutes ago, I emailed my final line changes to my editor. So few, were they, that she insisted I send a "clean" copy (no mark-up bubbles, red text, etc.) so she could forward it directly to the copy editor. Five weeks, a big overview edit, and three line edits later, my manuscript is finally ready to move forward on this journey. The lessons I learned from my editor thoughout this process will affect the way I write forever. And as I write this little blog diddy, I can't help but wonder if she knows that, if she recognizes her lasting impact.

I knew my editor would change my manuscript. I had no idea she'd change me.

Tackling writer's block: how to turn a stop sign into a speed bump

Writer's block: invisible, silent, and about as unsympathetic as ants to a picnic. And just like those pesky ants, it marches away with your plot/dialogue/character and drops it down a hole too tiny for you to follow. It's easy to glare at your screen, to consider the blinking cursor a traitorous bully. But I've noticed that any writing I muster with my face twisted into a pretzel typically comes off just as snarky and sluggish as I feel.

This debut novel of mine took me three years to write - and in those three years, I've faced down a lot of dead ends. Some successfully, and some not so much. During a particularly long stand-off with myself, I went on the hunt for a proverbial jackhammer. I read (a lot) and I google-searched til my finger cramped from scrolling. I've provided a list below of a few exercises I found most effective, but the key word is: exercise. I had to take time out from moving forward with my plot and stretch new muscles in my creativity. It meant slowing down my pace, but if I was being perfectly honest with myself, I had to admit I was at a complete stand still. So slowing down was actually an improvement.

1. The empty picture frame: Can't figure out how to get out of a scene? In Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird," she describes an exercise she gives in classes that she teaches. She tells her students to find/make/buy an empty picture frame and to write these words inside: What do you see in here? Forget about the action that you can't force forward, and instead make notes about what you see - no detail too small to notice. Top to bottom, horizon to horizon. Paint the picture. Live in it. What do you smell? What do you hear? This helps me 99% of the time that I use it. My picture frame is green, by the way.

2. Who ARE you? When my dialogue starts to err on the side of a polite conversation in a church sanctuary, it takes my whole scene down with it. The ho-hum banter paves a path straight to somewhere fiery. Usually what's happened is that I've lost track of who my characters ARE. What are they all about? What makes them tick? In a separate file/notebook/etc, create a complete - and I mean crazy complete - description of the inner workings of your character. Ask yourself asinine questions about what he/she might do in every day situations: found a lost dog, made a cup of coffee, answered the door to religious zealots, found a fifty-dollar bill, got behind an extreme couponer in the 10-items-or-less checkout line. What would your character do? What would they say? Does their inner dialogue have a catch phrase? What word do they typically use to agree or disagree? Considering these questions seems like the long way around, I know. But knowing how they speak in every day circumstances will make their dialogue read in a way that feels meaningful and authentic to your reader without weighing down the whole page.

3. Plot stall: Your main characters are standing around staring at each other. Cocktail hour is over and the main course is still thirty minutes away. Awkward. Instead of sending your characters for another round of free drinks, try this: kill off your main character. Seriously. Copy the section/chapter/whatever and paste it into a new file. Then, write a quick story from the point where the engine fell out of your plot and kill off your protagonist. This exercise makes you look through the eyes of all of your other characters and consider their integrity (and their resourcefulness.) Or maybe your leading hero succumbs to an unknown food allergy or a moment of tragic clumsiness. Either way, I promise your original scene won't look the same upon return.

4. Back track: sometimes, I have to level with myself and embrace the fact that I HAVE written myself into a corner. Somewhere along the way, I chucked the spare tire to cut down on weight and now I've got a flat. Then I have to do what every writer dreads: search back to the last place the story was breathing on its own, and pull the plug on the rest. I'm a huge advocate for the delete button. To be fair - and honest - I always start a second document file where I paste the bigger pieces I've cut from my work-in-progress just in case I need them again. But I very rarely go back for them. Our stories are in our minds - not in our key strokes. A scene can always be recreated, even with some well-earned grumbling.

Please feel free to leave your own tips - or links to your own posts on the subject. Thank you for reading and happy writing!

"looking" at you! - a writer challenge

LOOK! No, really, look. That was the challenge issued by my brilliant editor Summer Ross, who tagged me in a "look" writer challenge.

The rules: find out how many times the word "look" appears in your manuscript or work-in-progress. Then, post your favorite three paragraphs with the word "look" in it. Of course that means I had to evaluate each and every time I used the word.

When I saw the rules, I thought: piece of cake. That's not one of my go-to filler words. WRONG. Here's the truth in cold, hard numbers: I used the word "look" 327 times in 90,000 words. At first I thought, that ratio isn't too bad. Then I realized that there are 327 "looks" in 298 pages. That's a problem.

Look had become a filler word for me - people gave each other "looks" and "looked" at things and said "look" instead of owning an action, an expression, or just cutting to the chase (apparently, 327 times.) Needless to say, there's major editing happening over here. And I dutifully looked through every single "look." Here are my three favorite paragraphs with the word "look."

1.
Even now I can feel the drops of blood that splattered my cheek the moment my fist made contact. I catch myself wiping at it, sure I’ll see stains on the back of my hand. But there’s nothing there. A man could be dead because of these hands but they don’t look any different. Shouldn’t they look different? They start to tremble all over again. I shake them at my sides, shake them until they hurt.

2.
“Wait,” a new voice commands smoothly. Everyone goes silent at the sound, which is familiar even to me. The psych patient from the hospital. I wouldn’t forget that voice in a million years. The instant recognition makes the hairs prick on the back of my neck. As I turn to look for confirmation, everyone else in the courtyard drops into a deep bow. The only two left standing are him and me.

3.
“I am to make a crown. For his queen. He wants the horse shoe to be part of the center piece. If you don’t succeed…” He stops and looks away from her. The agony in their eyes cuts me to the quick. She wouldn’t let go of the necklace even in the face of death, and I left it on a bedside table. Two seconds ago, I was certain there was no part of my heart left intact. But there was. And it just shattered like a fist to a mirror. Spera and I are not the same. We are not alike. Not in the least bit.


Now for the last rule: once you've "looked," tag 5 writers in your response, and pass along this little challenge. If you've been tagged and want to participate, post your findings and your paragraphs on your blog/site/FB where ever, and make sure to let the writers you tagged know that they're next!

And here are my tags:

Rachel Harris
Lori Ann Robinson
Katie Snow Pendergrass
Kerri Cuevas
Charity Bradford

p.s.
"looking" at my three choices, I'm clearly a big fan of action of description in the use of the word "look."

line editing - DO judge a word by its cover

The good news: my totally rad editor gave me two thumbs up on the work I did on the "overview" edits (adjustments in major plot, characters, dialogue, and pacing/flow.)

The next step: in-line editing. In other words: making every word count. These words are literally purchased by our readers, which means they have a job to do. It means they've got to toil and sweat - because it means that word beat out every other word for the spot in the sentence. In the paragraph. In the chapter. In the story. Yes, I'm beating the horse. But the horse's job is to run. The horse's job is to win. And if you're riding a dead horse, you've got bigger problems.

On a lighter note, the first advice I ever got about word count was from a writer who I sat next to on a plane. I was a doe-eyed teenager who wanted to be a writer, and he was an adult who said things like "literary agent" and "word count." So I soaked up every piece of advice he was willing to dish, including this: "no publisher will look at your work as a first time author unless your manuscript is done (which is true as far as I know), and unless it is AT LEAST 100,000 words." That's not so true. In fact, depending on your genre, that's as far from the truth as you can get - especially in YA. That was probably the worst advice I have received to date as a writer. Why? Because it stuck with me, and I never questioned it. So I pumped my draft for word count - quantity first - and squeezed every word I could from the bones of my story, all in an effort to achieve that magic 100K count. The result: a plot that meandered from point to point, arriving unceremoniously at an overly concluded conclusion, disastrous dialogue weakened by almost every possible redundancy, and a protagonist whose defining moments were lost in scenes so descriptive tiles on the floor were counted (okay, thankfully that's an exaggeration, but you get the idea.)

So how do you know what to cut? Here are a few tips and words of wisdom that I've learned during this editing process:

1. Look for redundancy. Redundancy can be obvious - using a "real" word twice or more in a paragraph, but it can also happen in some indirect ways. Each new sentence should have a point all of its own, so make sure that pairs of sentences aren't saying the same thing twice. This can also happen in dialogue. Example: "Oh my gosh!" she exclaimed excitedly. See the triple repeat? "Oh my gosh!" works just fine on its own. Several well-known literary agents that blog are big fans of sticking with the tried and true he/she says and letting other versions of speech descriptions filter in as a rare exception.

2. Weak/passive voice. To be or not to be is NEVER the question, if you can help it. Cut out any "to be" verbs that you can and let your characters own their actions. Use words like is, was, are, am, be, been, etc. sparingly. But "to be" verbs aren't the only villains of passive voice. A few of my subconscious favorites: seems to, starts to, and begins to. *yawn.* I'm sorry, what was I saying? Try cutting the fluffy verbs from the action and see if you like the result.

3. Filler words. We all have them. Our go-to words when our creative juices are tapped out or we're trying to force something that just won't fit or flow. My go-to fillers: Just, seems, get, even, as, but, and suddenly. And, as an entire grammatical category: adverbs. Typically (hehe), adverbs fill the space where character-development/showing should happen. I tried to get away with this big time in my manuscript. I thought: if the editor sees this she'll tell me how to fix it. She did see it. You know what she said? "Fix this." Well played, madam. Well played.

4. The best advice I ever got and didn't want to believe: during my querying phase, I stalked more writing blogs than I cared to count, especially once I realized my 100K words bit was about as wrong as a nun at a strip club. I stumbled across a piece of wisdom that made me recoil from the screen and I rejected it immediately. Curious? The blogger's advice was this: find your favorite section of writing and cut it. Sounds crazy, right? Well here's the thing - the second I read it, I knew exactly what section of my manuscript I was most proud of as a writer. Then I read the blogger's reasoning: this section is probably just you showing off, and likely doesn't jive with the flow of the story or really add anything to the work around it. I disagreed with her for weeks. And I kept going back to it, tweaking it, finessing it. Not to make it fit better, of course, because it was my best writing. It fit! Didn't it? Kind of? Nope. Not at all. Finally, I cut it. And the whole chapter read so much better without it.

I hope this helps you avoid some of the mistakes I made. I'll post more soon on this topic. I'm learning so much during through the thoughts of my editor and I'm excited to share. Any other writers/bloggers/editors/whoever - please feel free to contribute your own tips (even if they completely contradict mine) and also please leave a link to your blog/page.

side note: I'm a BIG believer in Anne Lamott's concept of the "crappy" first draft (she uses a stronger word, but you get the idea.) Get your story down. Get your main characters fleshed out on paper. Then worry about finding the right words to do your story and your character justice.

What's in a name?

Now that my book is in the editing phase, a lot of the control is blissfully and terrifyingly out of my hands. I know it's all for the better - the team at WiDo is fantastic and I have the utmost face in their ability to polish a story 'til it shines. I'm very curious about any plot/character tweaks they'll want to make, and I hope I can deliver the changes they want.

One of the things about the book we keep bouncing around is the name. The first couple of years I worked on it I refered to it as "Origins." But then I started thinking about the word "Origin." Saying it made me feel a little funny. And I think there's a store called Origins. Or a shoe company. Or both. Either way, I am positive it wouldn't be the first book called Origins. So then I started calling it "Be Seeing You." The new label has more to do with the relationship between my protagonist and her love interest. But my submissions editor reassured me that the name is likely to change - and to change several times - between now and when it hits the shelves. So for now I'm referring to it as the first book in the Tanzy Hightower series, although the series will also be named something different too. Oiy. The good news is: there's an entire marketing department who is really good at diving into the heart of the story and digging out a name fitting for such a twisted, devastating adventure.