How Do You Know When It's Time to Change Course?

 How do you know when it's time to change course?

(See what I did there? Sneaked in a little sailing metaphor.)

The Shorter Story: After much discussion with my critique partner, my editor, and a few of my wonderful readers, I'm turning my fairytale retelling duology, which starts with To Kiss the Sea, into a TRILOGY!

I feel really good about this decision. I'm excited about the possibilities and will be expanding on some plot ideas that didn't make it into the original outline.

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The Longer Story: When it came to querying TKTS, I knew it was a little long for a debut novel. Not long for a fantasy novel, but longer than traditional publishers "like" to see in a new author. I was prepared to be told it was too long and that's essentially what happened. The general impressions from the first group of agents I queried were very positive! But I could tell the word count was holding at least half of them back from requesting more pages. You send out enough queries and you can learn to read between the lines!

I spent the end of October re-plotting the ending of TKTS and working out how the material I've removed can be made into the first half of Book 2. While the outline I finished this fall for the duology version of Book 2, can be split between Books 2 and 3!

The new version of TKTS (Book 1) is due to my editor in just a few weeks. If you need me I'll be haunting my usual writing spots!

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[Image: A silver metal lantern with a rope handle sites on a sand dune, a tea candle is lit inside. In front of the lantern, two antique books were left in the sand. In the unfocused background is a piece of driftwood.]