REBELS AND DESPERADOS - MILESTONE ACHIEVED

REBEL EMPIRE- BOOK TWO- MILESTONE ACHIEVED

I started writing this blog to chronicle my journey as a writer and at the time of the first post on May 29- I had already completed my first rough draft of the second novel in the series REBEL EMPIRE -entitled REBELS AND DESPERADOS which is the sequel to GETTYSBURG REDUX. So today I completed my first re-read and edit of the novel and I consider this one of the first true milestones in this new writer’s journey. So, a milestone achieved, and I must admit I really like this story a lot. I felt I had much more creative freedom with this novel than I did with the first book. In this case there was little or no historical baggage to handle, I used just a few actual historical characters and had free reign to let the creative juices flow.

There was a great deal of trepidation and anxiety in my mind when I sat down on Jan 1, 2013 to begin the sequel, after all I had completed GETTYSBURG REDUX in 1996 and a period of nearly 17 years had passed where I had not written a single word of fiction. Could I do it again, was there a second novel rambling around in my poor old brain? All very valid questions, but fueled with a few great ideas and a new lap top PC, many thanks to the family for the Christmas gift and building on that kernel of an idea which had floated around in my mind for years I started to write. I must admit that this novel basically wrote itself and while I had set an ambitious goal of 200 pages and a completion date of mid July, I was incredibly pleased to be finished the first draft by May 9^th, way ahead of my own schedule!.  Like I said the novel basically wrote itself, and while I had a reasonably firm idea of where the first half of the story would go, the second half took off and went to unexpected exciting places.

So now the first true rough draft is completed. My goal is now to take a second look at the formatting to seek any strange formatting problems, and then do a final second detailed edit.  Once that is complete, hopefully by the middle of July it will then go to my editor.  With a little luck the proposed publishing date is mid September. Fingers crossed.

One of the challenges for a writer that takes the independent course and self publishes is the task of getting a cover, a decent cover.  For REBELS AND DESPERADOS I had a good idea of what I wanted as a cover and I produced a mock up image using excel. However, I knew it was nowhere good enough to be used as a finished cover.  This is where my talented son-in-law Pato Lahman took my primitive attempts and ideas and worked some magic.

Here are the two covers he produced.

Cover 1- wanted poster cover

Cover 2, flag only

I prefer cover 1 with the wanted poster, so I’d love to hear your opinion, please let me know which one is better.