Scarred

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As mentioned in the post Suggested Platform, Scarred is my first title. I started writing it in 1980. It almost didn't get written. I did something that might seem arrogant, but it saved Scarred. My youngest was two my other children were six and seven, I think. At any rate they were in school. We lived in walking distance to the school. They came home for lunch. I made a statement out loud before they came home. I said, "I'm going to feed them, send them back to school, and put my youngest down for a nap. Then I will work on Joanne." Joanne was the first title for Scarred. After I sent the kids back to school, I said out loud again, "I'm going to put my youngest down for a nap and take one too." The next thing that happened was enough to boggle the mind. I heard the audible voice of God telling me "Oh no you're not!" I proceeded to argue with Him. What I can tell you is that you can't argue with God and win. After giving Him every reason why it would be a good idea not to continue, He told me it would work out, and my excuse that it wasn't good, was to tell me to continue from where I left off and it would be okay. The chapter I was working on at the time was the fourth chapter. It was awful. When I finished chapter 4, it was the best chapter in the book and continued to be the best for a very long time. I said in the previous post that I had an idea about how to get through each chapter. I knew nothing about POV, cliff hangers. I came to the page number that would make the next chapter that would make 12 chapters out of 500 pages. As I wrote Joanne, I moved from paper to word processor then to computer. I had everything saved on disks. You know them if you're old enough to know the early evolutions of the computer. While working on the computer, it crashed three times. I lost everything. Or so I thought. Someone at church told me I could retrieve my books. Armed with a name, address, and phone number, I took my computer to a man who worked out of his home. He retrieved my hard drive and saved my sanity at the same time. This happened two more times. The last time I needed to retrieve all my data, my computer refused to let me save Joanne under its current title. That's when Scarred became the book's title. I wasn't done learning what I needed to know about writing. I continued to eat up everything I read in Writer's Digest and later The Writer magazine. Scarred continued to go through one revision after another. I kept telling myself each revision was the last. You're done revising when the book tells you it's ready for the publishing stage. The most important thing I learned about writing was POV (Point of View). Thus began the most intricate revision I could make. Scarred was in universal POV. I needed to put it into no more than a three person POV. It was a lot of work, but when I finished that revision, I knew I had come a lot closer to publication than before. Then came the 8-year silence. I couldn't write and raise my kids at the same time. Scarred or Joanne I don't know which, sat on my closet floor for eight years waiting for me to pick it up again. Probably Joanne since it was handwritten. When I picked up the manuscript again and read it, I was ready to throw in the towel. I had taken my male lead and changed him in the middle from the strong willed person I had him at the beginning and the end, but not in the middle. I needed to make him strong in the middle too. Another revision. When I thought I was finally ready, I started putting pieces of it on a writing site for feedback. I got a lot of feedback, good feedback. More revision. I was getting close. The day came when I heard about a Christian writer's conference close to home. It was a week-long conference. I signed up, paid the fees for commuting daily, and when I got ready to go to the conference, I asked God which publishing house to offer it to. He told me. I told Him the editor needed to be a woman, not a man. God has a sense of humor. When I met with the editor from Tyndale House Publishers, I was sitting on the edge of my seat while he looked through the first three chapters I had typed up. The manuscript was finished and I hoped for the last time. His first words gave me hope and a let down at the same time. He asked me if it was a series. It wasn't. I had barely gotten it finished. I wasn't thinking about a series. Not then. His next words were that he wanted to see it when I had it finished. Fully typed. That took another couple of years. When I had Joanne typed, I took it to him at Tyndale House. He took it from my hands and said he would look it over. I left. Three days later, I got the manuscript back in the mail with a two-page rejection letter. That was the one thing that caused me to keep going with Joanne, now Scarred. He gave me specific things I needed to work on to make it acceptable for their publishing house. Fast forward - In 2012, 32 years after I started writing Joanne, I published Scarred under a new title, not with a traditional publishing house, but with a self-publishing house. I wasn't done revising, even though I finally had it published and I got my first five-star review. When I opened it and read the first page, I saw a huge comma error that changed the entire paragraph. I wondered if I could still revise and put out a new edition. I found out I could. So, I did with help from a publishing team. I since fired them as my publishers, and put Scarred out in a third edition through KDP, an Amazon company. I found out I can publish free with them. Here is the back cover blurb: Scarred Back Cover Copy Jo-Ann is a disillusioned young woman who decides the best thing for her is to leave. Leave school, where she has been for seven years since the tragic death of her parents, which left her an orphan at the age of ten. Leave England and a society that forgot about her. Leave everything she knows, except her best friend, who insists on going with her – plunging them both into the dangers found on the high seas, with pirate battles, slave markets, and the hardships found in Colonial America. Quentin Alexander, Earl of Thurgarton, learns he is Jo-Ann’s guardian through a message from the headmistress of the school she attended. With permission from the Crown, he determines to bring Jo-Ann and her companion back to England. Both Jo-Ann and Quentin are determined on seeing their objectives met: she to stay in the colonies, and he to take her back. Who will win the battle of wills, and at what cost? Thank you for reading. The image is the cover for Scarred. I took that photo from the Tall Ship Festival in Green Bay. The first publishing house I used was able to photoshop it so it would work as a cover.