Novel #2 Update: Hardest Part of It All--The Crucial Synopsis.

And here I was so happy that the editing part was completely done, and I was almost halfway done with creating the right cover design, when suddenly someone reminded me of one tiny fact that I have completely forgotten about: the book's synopsis.

And my heart sank.

Not because it is an impossible task, but because summarizing your novel to one or two paragraphs has got to be the hardest part of writing a novel, period.  You have to sell the novel to the potential reader, convey just about everything, or at the very least, the most crucial aspects of the story without giving any surprises away!  Which sometimes means omitting amazing details that would for sure drive people to buy/read the book, but you can't give those details away because they serve a larger story and their impact needs to be discover while reading the book, not on a summary.

So I have stop all work on the cover design, to concentrate on the synopsis.  I must have written about 10 different versions of the synopsis for VIOLET HILL, until I landed on the version I ended up using for the official release.  But VIOLET HILL, when compare to book #2, was a piece of cake.  VIOLET HILL might have been a bit difficult to summarized, but the story itself is very straightforward compare to the new novel.  The new one is perhaps the most complex story I've ever dreamed up; it is a huge, sprawling epic from which book #2 is only a fraction of. 

I already feel a headache coming on......

But fear not, I'm known for putting myself in this type of "against the wall" situations and finding my way out. I am a higly intelligent, confident, practical, resourceful being, and though it may take a dozen drafts, I will end up with the perfect synopsis for it.  Which I will then post here, along with the official reveal of the novel's title.

stay tuned.....

Book Number 2-update

Finishing the editing was probably the easy part.  I have a clear idea of the cover design I want to utilize for my upcoming novel, the only issue is getting that idea to work.  When I was looking for the cover image of VIOLET HILL, I wanted (of course) an image that would represent the story or more importantly convey the feeling of the book, and the image I choose, which I believe I was lucky to come across is perfect: the upside down view to a basement dead end.

For anyone that's read VIOLET HILL, you know that I couldn't have picked a better image to represent the novel. A sense of dread, being trapped with no escape, desperation, claustrophobic fear, and your world and everythig you know completely shuffled into something unknown.  That's all right there in the cover when you read the novel.

I want the cover of book 2 to be just as perfect as that of VIOLET HILL, and so far I haven't being able to nailed it, but I'm positive that I'm going to.

Fingers crossed.

What a Hurricane Can Make You Accomplished.

So this weekend, we, the people of the northeast cost, had to deal with the passing of hurricane Irene. Though there wasn't much damaged at all around my area (NYC) asside from hours and hours of heavy rain and wind, I was most concern with losing power, so I stayed up, burning the midnight oil to finished my final revision of my next novel.  And I'm very happy to say that the mission was accomplished!!

Granted, we did not, in fact, lost power for a second, but the important thing is that I feared we would, so it made me sit down and not moved until this revision was done, otherwise, I can bet I would still be working on it for another week or so.  So even though Irene did cause a lot of damages and some lives were lost, for which I'm very saddened, in some weird selfish way, I have to say thanks to it for pushing me to do what I should have been done with weeks ago.

Next up: working on the cover/backcover design, the pages layout, and overall look of the novel, before my late October/early November publishing deadline.

Wish me luck.