The Secret Empire--Book Three

Hello,


It's been a good week for me. I got to hang out with one of my oldest and best friends, Jordan Stephens, who was in town for the holiday. Work was also great at the hospital. I got to do a whole bunch of random acts of kindness, and help a lot of people. Then of course, Thanksgiving was quite tasty. Tam and I made some excellent food, and had a quiet, low-stress week. I'm really thankful for my health and all the good things in my life.

I'm extremely thankful that I figured out how to start the first chapter of The Secret Empire, Book Three of the Iron Dragon Series. I'm redoing the first part of the book entirely after writing it several years ago. The original manuscript was 143,000 words. I'm hoping to cut it down by at least 40,000 words. I've already cut 20,000, and that's just from the opening, which is changing completely. I'm probably going to rewrite the entire book, but I know there are chapters later on that work pretty well.

The news this week I wrote a new chapter one, which is just under 2,000 words. Remember, I've already written a manuscript for the whole book, but I'll be redoing practically the whole thing. The overall story won't change that much, but I'm going to execute it much differently.

I've been thinking about how to attack this book and was working on a rewrite plan for the past couple of weeks. I've read the old manuscript and cut big sections in the beginning that really didn't need to be there. More will go as I rework the book. I'm just waiting to cut certain sections later when I'm working on those particular parts. As I go on this writer journey I realize that one of biggest problems with my earlier writing was that I was writing out long journeys where nothing really happened to advance the plot. There was character development, but little else. Now I try hard to keep the book moving quickly while avoiding some of the "locomotive" writing of my past.

It was such a struggle to write the new first line. Mostly because I didn't have a good vision of the actual chapter. It took me a while to decide what was actually going to happen in the opening scenes, though I had a plan--it was just too vague for me with too many possibilities. I think I've got a good opening scene now, but I'm certain it'll change a over time. My goal is to get a draft of this book done in the next three months or so. Then I'm going to finish Medusa's Daughter, an almost completed manuscript I had to shelve while working the Iron Dragon books.

What I really need at this point is to get rolling on book three--and sell the entire series to a big publisher. Hopefully, DAW Books will pick me up and put the books out in paperback. Book two, The Dragon Hunters comes out in hardcover, in May of 2009 from Five Star Books. I'm really looking forward to that now. I'd like to thank everyone who has supported me along the way and I think the readers of The Golden Cord are really going to enjoy book two.

Best wishes,

Paul Genesse
Author of The Dragon Hunters
Book Two of the Iron Dragon Series
(the first two chapters of book two are available on my website)
www.paulgenesse.com