This last month has been a mix of geeky stuff and writer stuff so I figured why not share both as they tend to bleed into each other.

Maybe quite literally considering what I have planned for my dragon series guys. *looks shifty eyed and innocent*

The geek highlight of this month was Armageddon. Not the end of the world, four motorcyclists of the apocalypse event, but the annual pulp culture event in Wellington. I went with a group of friends and we had a lovely time. I made a connection with an Australian author which was cool, had a browse round stalls and bought a gorgeous print of a dragon watching a sunset. I also listened to Matt Ryan aka Constantine’s talk, which was very entertaining.

This month I also got hooked on a ‘how to write’ book that my friend Gillian St. Kevern put me onto when we had our mini writers’ retreat here in January. I was so impressed by Just Write by James Scott Bell, that I’ve decided I need my own copy once my bank account has recovered from the geeky event. Once of the great things about libraries is being able to try before you buy. I have one of his other books—Plot and Structure out to read too, and I suspect it’s another I’ll want to add to my collection.

I particularly found his comments about strong beginning very helpful. I finally had the time to outline the second Dragon of Astria book, which has undergone a title change and is now called Forgotten in Fire. [This is its 2nd title change as I discovered a new book coming out with the title I was going to use.] Loads of world building which was fun and those guys are going to have to work hard for their happy ending.

When I wrote the first book in the series—A Knight to Remember—a couple of my betas told me that the last chapter I’d written wasn’t the end of that book, which was supposed to be a stand alone, but the beginning of a sequel. They were right. I figured that as it was the beginning of the next book, I’d tweak it and use it as such. However, although I love what I’ve written I read it through once I was done—with Scott Bell’s comments—in mind and couldn’t shake the feeling that the scene wasn’t the beginning of the book.

Hopefully this scene, which keeps getting moved around, will eventually end up somewhere in the story, although I suspect it will be pretty much unrecognisable when it does. But, in the meantime, I bit the bullet, and started writing the story again. Needless to say it’s flowing much better now, and the new beginning is a lot stronger, although I seriously need to find some quality writing time!

Do you have ‘how to write’ books that you keep going back to, and if so what are they? I’d also love to hear other people’s stories about rewriting beginnings. I find the beginnings and ending are often the part of the book that I end up rewriting several times because I think they’re crucial to a good story.