For those of you who don't read this blog regularly, Earthbow is the sequel to Seabird (at Amazon), my fantasy novel set on Narenta. (For reviews of Seabird, go to "News!" at my website.)

Earthbow chronicles the events of the second Narentan Tumult. Part of its complex story involves Xander Marshall--brother to Cara Marshall who was the Outworlder sent to Narenta from Earth at the beginning of the First Tumult.

(For those of you who have read Seabird and are wondering who this Xander person is, Cara called her brother by the nickname of Sandy. He prefers Xander which is short for his given name of Alexander.

You can find background on Earthbow at two places on my website: 1. "Earthbow, Book 2" and 2. "970,000 Words (More or Less)" -- Scroll down until you see the 'Earthbow" listing.

Now for the updates.

I am three-quarters of the way through revising Earthbow Draft Two -- in effect converting it into Earthbow Draft Three.
Or, as I prefer to think of it at this point Earthbow Draft 3 is 3/4 complete! Doesn't that sound lots better?

I've already used WORD spelling and grammar check on the last quarter of Draft Three (D-3) and made the changes that weren't howlingly awful suggestions from the software. I've made a pass through the last quarter of D-3 with the "formatting revealed" --always a mind-boggling weird mess on-screen. That pass brought up lots of extraneous spaces, especially around punctuation like quotation marks and the last period in a paragraph.

I have already read through and made many changes in the first three quarters of the manuscript and I hope to finish the last quarter of it over the next 1-2 weeks, depending on want needs doing, and how messy it is to get to and from PT for the next couple of weeks.

This doesn't mean that the first three quarters of Earthbow D-3 are perfect. Far from!
As I worked my way along, I corrected and rewrote anything that I could quickly and efficiently, i.e. without slowing my over all progress through the whole manuscript by too much.

The current pass leaves me with about 20-plus changes that I still need to make to the first 3/4 of the draft. Some changes will sound familiar to some people like JR , BodgeI, or DressageGrrrl in or associated with Written Remains or to people like Xanthrope who has been following my work for years. Others, I have yet to discuss with anyone because they fall late in the manuscript, which no one has read in decades, or else they are minor but pesky --like using the same word (ex "seemed") five times on one page. (Oopsie!)

The major problems involve:
--- the early adventures of a young knight named Coris and the adventures of a Young One named Lania, as both try to do a similar good deed,  to help a captive.
--- making sure that scenes with horses heavily involved in them make sense, especially to those who are far more knowledgeable than me, like DressageGrrrl.
--- cutting down on the number of casualties in the first quarter of the book, without making difficult situations suddenly appear to be a snap to solve. (Toughy, this one.)
--- adding seabirds, at least in passing, at the request of JR. (This is difficult since this story takes place in a landlocked country with just a few lakes, during their dry season.)
--- adding setting details, virtually everywhere. Generic thorn bushes, rocks and trees are NOT ENOUGH!!!
--- trying to excise all head-hopping from one character to another in the same scene--Forget any attempt at doing so in the same chapter.

(Earthbow is a complex tale, written in 3rd person but from multiple points of view, because no one character --not even the Outworlder-- is privy to everything that happens in the course of the tale. For instance, for the reader to know everything he/she needs to know, it was necessary for me to tell certain parts of the story from the POV of a villain and also from the POV of a stoah, aka a sentient arboreal animal.)

My biggest challenge is that Earthbow is too long--by industry standards. It appears to be just the right length, given everything that it has to relate but that doesn't count. (Did Tolkien have the problem? He must have.)
Over the last week, I've managed to shave off about 450 words while doing editing, but that's a drop in the bucket when the manuscript is 1,000's of words too long. I'm not sure what happened. At one time, I could have sworn Earthbow was the same length as Seabird, give or take a 1000 words. It even had the same number of chapters. But then, I hadn't realized that some of the oldest of the old passages never were scanned into a WORD file or that a WORD file or two were lost over the decades.
(I wrote Earthbow somewhere between 1980 and 1982, so far as I can tell. Maybe a bit into '83.)

Other challenges include coming up with an idea for the cover. It should have a picture of a bow on it -- which is entirely the wrong shape and size to fit on a cover. A tree should figure into the cover as well. And, well, at least one other thing but that's a secret.

And then there's the Pannians, a kind of alien group, which is all I will say about them for the time being. Except this. I know about fragments of their anatomy but I have never been able to envision how the fragments fit together. Fortunately for me, JR's son, Justin said that he would take a crack at putting the fragments together to suggest a whole organism.

When I think about the Pannians, that leads to ominous thoughts about nailing down the details of  "the ropreth', an asty magical thingie. But I'll get to that when I get to that. Maybe the day before publication.   ;-P

In the meantime, I am virtually without beta readers and entirely without funds for hiring an editor--unless a certain grant for really old speculative fiction writers just happens to come through.

So now you know why I wrote all this. You thought I was giving you news! Giggle! I'm asking for help--intellectual and/or spiritual.

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P.S.  Dave Wood at Gryphonwood Press is setting up a poll in which people can vote for either the original cover of Seabird or a possible new one. I will notify you when I have URLs for copies of both covers as well as the place where you can vote. Please also feel free to email me or to post hear about your reasons for choosing a cover  Thank you!


Cover jpgs
Current cover -->

http://streetofeyes.com/files/seabird%20wraparound%201.jpg  Dave's proposed cover -->

http://streetofeyes.com/files/seabird%20wraparound%202.jpg

POLL LOCATION (PLEASE ADD RELEVANT COMMENTARY IF THE SITE PERMITS! THANKS!)

http://www.gryphonwoodpress.com/smf/index.php?topic=91.msg538#new

Dave Wood, my editor, may be reached at

dave AT gryphonwoodpress DOT com
should you wish to comment about a cover more directly.

p.p.s. Don't forget that the actual book, "Seabird" is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and locally (for Delawareans) at the 9th Street Bookstore.
Alas, it is not available in your local Borders bookshelves, Walmart, SF specialty shop, etc, unless you special order.