Category: Book Two, ALIGNMENT
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Nearing the Halfway Point
This week I managed to hit the 40% mark on Alignment, Book II’s first draft. The halfway point is in sight! On average, I’m writing about 1,000 words a day, give or take, which has helped the progress bar continue to advance at a nice pace. It’s crazy to think…
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Writing Scenes You Hate
Every writer has them, that annoying scene that has to be written despite all attempts to avoid it. For me, they are courtroom scenes. I know there are millions of people out there in the world that love a good courtroom scene, but I am not one of them. I…
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2025’s Schedule
Updates and changes are afoot! As you’ve probably noticed, my website has been given another facelift. While it may look rather plain right now, the new look is in preparation to show off the book cover artwork for Awakening once it is finalized. The change also reflects the switch over…
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Is Writing Fantasy Easy?
I recently saw a comment on a writing community post arguing that the majority of its members wrote fantasy because it was the easiest genre to write. Another commenter suggested fantasy doesn’t require as much research as other genres because you can make everything up. Additionally, someone else added that…
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Switching Tracks
After much contemplating and deliberation, I have decided to stop querying my debut novel to literary agents and will officially be making the switch to self-publishing. I can say with all honesty that I gave traditional publishing a good try but, in the end, I made the decision to switch…
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Should I Take the Plunge?
Tomorrow marks five months since I began querying my debut novel, Awakening. I had decided to try my hand at traditional publishing back in September of 2024, which meant the arduous business of querying literary agents. I meticulously kept track of each query I sent out using a lengthy Excel…
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A Rough Start
The transition from 2024 into 2025 has not gone as smoothly as I’d hoped. Right before Christmas I contracted E. coli poisoning. I’m not kidding when I say it was the sickest I’ve ever been. It took a solid two weeks to recover during which I missed most of the…
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A New Proof
A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… I had a proof of my very first ever draft of Awakening privately printed. At that point in time, it didn’t have a title but was simplify known as First Draft. (Riveting, I know.) The story was terrible. No,…
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The Importance of Free Writing the First Draft
I don’t know if there’s an actual term out there for when writers sit down and write their first draft, but I’ve started referring to it as “free writing”. To explain how I came up with that term, I need to go back many years ago to when I wrote…
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A Story Within a Story
I’ll admit it, querying a novel is a difficult path to tread. It’s not because of the possible rejections or so much the waiting for a response, but due to the fact that I’m left with a feeling of incompletion. In my mind, Awakening won’t feel complete until it’s printed…
Arwen McCain 