A 3-Star Review For Betrayed!

Greetings all,

I love it when I get to share reviews. I was pleased to find this three-star review for Betrayed on Amazon the other day.

This review brought up a major struggle I had with the book. The pace of the events left me in this strange position. I needed to keep thing moving within the timeline of actual events, but that made it very difficult to delve into the characters the way I wanted. I had always planned to give other characters time in the limelight, and I do the same in Discovered. However, that made it challenging to give characters the attention I wanted.

So this is a fair review that identifies something I felt conflicted over. I’m still proud of Betrayed, and I know there are those who loved it, but I can completely understand that it might be the least emotionally impactful story. Discovered will be (by far) the longest book. We meet several new characters, two of whom have POV chapters. Kira gets her turn after Dom had his in the previous book. I hope this doesn’t mean that Dom’s story will be diminished. I’m very excited to get this First Draft done and to Alpha Readers, who I hope will help me make sure the conclusion is as satisfying as it can be.

Thanks for reading,

Matt

I’m About to Start the Beta Draft of Betrayed: A Thank you to Beta Readers

Greetings all!

I’m happy to report I’m about to begin work in the Beta Draft of Betrayed. This will be the last content draft and the last set of revisions. After this, I send it out for proofreading and then polish it up for publishing.

I’d like to just take a moment to thank my beta readers!

First up is Bia Bella Baker, author of the HECCTROSSIPY series.

Next up are Tamy and Don Way. I actually met them outside an Ikea, and they’ve been supporting me and my work ever since.

I just want to thank them for taking the time to read Betrayed and offer feedback. The good news is they all liked it! Yes, they all had constructive feedback that I have to comb through and consider as I do this final draft.

I’ll say this much, Kira has been a challenge to write, and she’ll be challenging. Her arc is powerful, and I’m of the opinion that if I don’t get it right, the series will suffer greatly. I’d argue the next most important arc is Kaitlyn. Dom and Sal aren’t nearly as challenging because they’re more simplistic in nature.

I’ll start work on that early next week. While I was waiting, I got some more work done on Discovered. I’m just a bit over halfway done with the discovery draft of that story, and it’s looking solid.

I’m doing everything I can to get Betrayed out as soon as I can. It’ll take me at least a month to finish. Then I’ll need to give Sara time to proofread it. Then I have to apply those edits. So I’m hoping for a February or March release date. While Sara proofreads Betrayed, I’ll switch right back to Discovered, so it shouldn’t be nearly as long a wait for that book as it was for Betrayed.

Again, I just want to thank my beta readers and let you all know where I’m at. I can’t thank you all enough for the support you give. I hope you choose to stick with me and continue to enjoy my silly little stories.

Thanks for reading,

Matt

I’ve Started the Alpha Draft of Betrayed!

 

Greetings all,

You can buy Caught (the first book in the series) on Amazon or Audible. 

Betrayed is coming along. I’ve started the Alpha Draft, which is the draft I do after my alpha reader (in this case) has had a chance to look at it.

 

First thing’s first. I want to take a moment to thank Grace for taking the time to read this rough draft and provide the feedback she did. For us self-published authors, finding readers is hard enough, let alone finding a reader who’s willing to read a rough draft.

Now is the time I take her feedback into consideration and do another chapter-by-chapter pass on the book. This cleans the mechanics of the story up, but more importantly it gives me a chance to locate plot holes and timeline issues. This trilogy spans something in the neighborhood of seven years, and there are a lot of things that happen that have to time out correctly.

The other issue is character development and plotting. Kaitlyn and Kira in particular have some critical areas of growth. There are a lot of foreshadow elements that should pay off in Discovered. So while I work on this draft, I’m looking for ways to establish critical character development aspects without being heavy handed.

I felt a touch of discouragement as I started the Discovery Draft exactly a year ago (as you read this Dec. 7). The truth is, writing is a war of endurance. When it’s not full time, you sit down and take what time you can. I’d expect to get through the Alpha Draft sometime in January. Then it’s off to Sara for the Developmental Edit. Assuming she gets it back to me in two weeks or so, I can start that draft in March. Then it goes off to Beta Readers.  They get a month to read it and provide feedback, so I should work on my Beta Draft in June. That means I get Sara another crack at it for proofreading in July, and so September or October 2020 is a likely neighborhood for the official release.

Things could go faster as I get time here and there, or they might slow down if finances make it hard to send the book out to Sara for either of her two rounds of edits. I feel confident that those dates are pretty solid.

While I’m waiting for feedback, I’ll keep plugging away on Discovered. I’m still outlining it at the moment. Using the timeline above, I think I could maybe get the Discovery Draft done around when Betrayed comes out.  My math says there will be about two months where I can’t move forward with Betrayed because I’m waiting on feedback. That’s way less certain than Betrayed’s fall 2020 release.

I know this is a big slowdown from the eight titles I’ve released in the last two years, but a lot of those releases were portions of other projects. I have other projects that are further along, but I’ve been trying to get the Oneiros Log finished for years now, and I owe it to those readers to get that finished before I start bouncing around as I’m want to do.

I promise I’m working as hard as I can, and I’ll keep putting out the best stories I can in hopes that you will find them entertaining.

Thanks for reading,

Matt