Wretched Queen

Some of you may have noticed that the progress bar for "Wretched Queen 1.1" reached 100% last week.  That's right!  Draft 1 is finally complete.  This has been an interesting project to work on.  The story, in a nutshell, plays with the tropes we all know and love about Dark Lords (aka Evil Overlords, aka Big Bads, etc)--in this case, an Evil Queen.  This idea first came to me some time in 2008, during which I wrote what I thought was backstory for the piece.  As I've written this first draft, however, that back story has sort of wormed its way through the main narrative.  I'm preliminarily pleased with the results.

Why am I working on a short story (a novelette, actually) when I've got an entire novel burning a hole in my hard drive, just waiting to be revised?  The Writers of the Future contest, that's why.

WOTF is great.  If you can win that contest, you've got a pretty good "in" as far as the publishing industry is concerned.  Problem is, the contest is uber-competitive.  Which is why I plan on submitting a story every quarter of the contest until I win or they tell me to stop*.  We'll see which happens first.

Anyway.  I was talking about "Wretched Queen," right?  Here are some brief facts about the story:

Title:  "Wretched Queen"
Total Word Count:  11,688
Total (manuscript) Page Count:  56
Sections: 7
Viewpoint Characters: 2 major, 1 minor
File Size:  74 KB
Start Date:  I think it was March of 2008 when I started brainstorming and planning the idea, and drafting out the "backstory."  I returned to the idea for WOTF in mid October of 2012
End Date:  16 Nov 2012

Now, of course, this is just a first draft.  I'm planning on doing a major first revision starting tomorrow, and taking care of some of the major glitches in the story.  From there, I'll give the story to some first readers and see what they think, make more changes after that, and so forth until I submit the story--hopefully by the end of December to get it in to the contest in time for Q1 of 2013.

And there are, indeed, some major issues I think may need fixing.  The amount of viewpoint characters, for one, may be a bit too much for a novelette.  I also play with a number of things as far as form is concerned (tense, person, etc.), and I'm not quite sure whether I pull that off or not.  But, that's what revision and readers are for!  So, without further ado, that's what I'll be jumping into in the next couple weeks.

Wish me luck.


*  Now, I may not submit for the second and third quarters of next year (however long it takes me to finish BTD 2.0).  While the contest is important to me and a good way to "break in," even if I do happen to win, that doesn't do me much good unless I have a novel waiting in the wings and ready to go.  But, once that's taken care of, I plan on submitting essentially every quarter.