Mountains and molehills

An idiom referring to over-reactive, histrionic behaviour where a person makes too much of a minor issue.

Now, I know I am absolutely prone to histrionic behavior. Queen of exaggeration and teetting on the edge of dramacydal. I’m expressive, too much so at times, and emotional, too much so at times, and so it comes with a bit of embarrassment when I go to sleep one night surrounded by mountains and wake up the next realizing they are just molehills.

About a month ago, I got notes back from my editor on the sequel to The Accidental Hero. Y’all remember that newsletter where I droned on and on about being blindsided and was so upset.

My editor, and I quote, told me: “These changes really won’t take you very long to do.”

And I was thinking, “yeah, right, chick! This is a freaking overhaul.”

But it wasn’t.

That was me making mountains where only molehills existed.

Two weeks of revising and writing later, I’m done. Finito. Pressed send on the email to submit the changes back to my editor and now, it’s another waiting game.

In the process, I was amazed it how easy it was to remove whole swaths of the original story and insert new ideas, stitching together exiting scenes to make the story still work. Most of the first quarter of the book is new, but the rest of the book required only minor updates. That allowed me to zoom through to the end of the book in no time.

So, what’s out and what’s in.

I’ll give a sneak peek.

Original story – Mena and Julian had broken up in between the end of The Accidental Hero and the beginning of the sequel. Much of the story revolved around Julian not understanding or believing that Mena didn’t want to be with him anymore and trying to save her life and win her back at the same time. But … the reason for the breakup was complicated, confusing, flimsy and not well developed in the story. So, it was more frustrating and unbelievable than something that worked.

New story – Mena and Julian are together and in love at the beginning of the sequel. They are starting to experience “normal” relationship issues primarily focused around marriage. Julian likes the idea. Mena resists because this would be her second time trying to make a marriage work. It scares her and she’d rather not try. Then threats from the past and from the present rock their relationship. Mena finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time and Julian has to save her (of course!) while they deal with a new threat that could break them up for good.

With my edits made, I’m hoping to get the green light from the editor over the next couple of weeks and be able to announce a launch date, title and cover reveal really soon!

… guess I better start thinking about a title and a cover now … lol