Focusing On Arista
I joined an online editing class and decided to use Arista Doyle And The Secret Of The Bees for practice. Learned a lot and applied the lessons to the manuscript. Improvements were made.
Now I am kicking around the idea of getting a developmental editor. Arista started out 20 years ago as an adult level murder mystery. Along the way I added an autistic child as a way of honoring one of my friends who has an autistic son. Well, Arista grew to be an important character. One night I was woken with the idea of changing gears and making Arista the main character. It meant a lot of re-writing. And it changed point of view.
Now the main character was a mentally challenged 10 year old girl who had trouble communicating. Much of what I had written went out the window but the main concept; bees being blamed, didn’t change. Now the book is a middle grade fantasy/murder mystery. And it needs some help.