We're doing something a bit different this week. We were priviliged to have a great interview with Quonus10, both about his new Premium story Chosen of Honorus, as well as his experiences with getting published. I've broken his interview into two parts - today we give you his thoughts on his new story and tomorrow you'll have his thoughts on being published. We hope you enjoy this two parter!

Status: Premium, in progress
Word Count so far: 30,626

How did the idea for Chosen of Honorus come to you?

The beginnings of this series was about six years ago. Like most of my writing, it started with an image. I saw Farrell sitting outside the mountain. I still have that scene, but it is nothing what it ultimately evolved into. Once I fleshed out the original scene, I started to back fill and lay out the world, the players, the conflict, etc.

I know you went through an arduous editing process with an independent editor who really forced you to consider a lot of new information as you polished the story. Can you give us an idea of the process and what it taught you?

Once it was decided I would work on this for GA’s Premium Content section, I began to rewrite the story. Over six years I learned a few things about perspective, head hopping, tense, etc. The original story board changed a bit over time as well, meaning in future chapters I wanted to do things that conflicted with the beginning. After that, Anyta Sunday read it and made suggestions to each chapter. Only after all that did I send it to the independent editor. At the time I felt pretty good about it and thought it would sail through. Wrong. First I was told to go back and rewrite every chapter, eliminating wordy sections and replacing weak verbs. She – the editor – gave me guidelines to use as I self edited again. We also started a story guide where we put down all the ‘rules’ of the world. For instance, was it Grand Master Wizard or grand master wizard? High Priest or high priest? We referred to the guide often to be sure we kept things consistent. Finally, she started reviewing things like this scene needs work, or what was the purpose of this character? Oh, well then in that case you need to add more here. Those kind of comments and corrections.

When I was finished, I had a new appreciation for the difference between good writing and published quality writing. I’ve tried to incorporate those things going forward and it has actually slowed my writing down. But I’m hopeful it will reduce the amount of time editing and re-editing.

What’s next for you? Are you working on the next part of Miceral and Farrel’s story or something new?

Miceral and Farrell’s story is by no means complete. I have probably the next 3-4 books written, depending on how long they each are. Those need a major rewrite just as Chosen did, but I’ve started that process. In addition, Anyta and I are working on another story we hope Dreamspinner will want to publish and I’ve started a sequel to Second Shot. But doing all at once is too much to focus on at one time, so I’m going to work with Anyta on that book and work on revising the next book of The Champions of the Gods series. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I have the need to write about Harlin and Stefrem, the two characters featured in a Cold Rain. That one is on the back burner for the foreseeable future, but I’d really love to get that written one day as well.