The halfway mark

Yesterday, I finished my second draft edits.

*CONFETTI!*

Yup. I hit one more milestone with this novel, which is two more than the first novel I tried to write. Now, I need to take a mental break from the novel, step back from it and rest. I cannot allow myself to look at it, otherwise when it comes to round three, I won't have those fresh eyes to catch my mistakes. It's amazing what you see when you have a month or more between your drafts.

I don't know how many of you have heard of scribophile.com, but it's a critiquing website for serious writers. I'll be spending the next month or so over there, getting my act together, and getting additional feedback on my novel as far as plot, characterization, theme, consistency, etc. I'll be doing this before I start work on the third draft, so that I can take their suggestions into account and bring you a much better novel.

I gotta say, just on my own, I can see a dramatic difference between the quality of the first draft, and the quality of the second draft. I can only imagine how stark the contrast between the second and third will be.

On the flipside of things, I have been trying for months to come up with a term or phrase that would describe my novel's world. It's based heavily on our Earth, but it's not our Earth. It's a different Earth, a fake Earth. Long story short, I stumbled upon two articles on Wikipedia detailing natural, celestial phenomena known as a Moon Dog and a Sun Dog. Considering what the events entail, I thought of doing something similar.

"Earth Dog" will describe the world, to say that it is a fake/mock Earth, similar to our own yet extremely different. If I were to build a series of books set in this same world, I would refer to them as the Earth Dog series, or the Earth Dog novels. I don't have a sequel planned (yet), but you'll just have to stay tuned to find out if there's more to see of Fredderick ger Grimmbone or his family.