The Last War…er…Sheep

Book – The Last – is finished. 

Huzzah. 
Boo. 

Hiss. 

Whatevs. 

Still not sure what I feel about it. I am the worst  judge of my own work because I am very hard on myself and am not sure I think anything I write is more than OK. All of this is prolly why I am lousy at self-promotion. I hate it. But, that’s something I’ve said more than enough about. 

The Last Sheep, as the book is now called wrapped up this weekend. I was happy to see there weren’t as many fixes as I had anticipated and that I kept a pretty good through-line through the whole thing. It was a year since writing to editing and it held together well. It was good to be able to soften some of the hard edges of the book and to change some things, add some things, and to bring some of the emotional tones more to the fore. It’s a dark book, though it didn’t really get any darker than I had anticipated. How ‘all ages’ it is is a big question. There’s nothing overtly adult about the book – no cursing, gore, sex, language or the like – but the tone is dark and there are very dark aspects to it. 

Darker than Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings and so on? 

No. 

But then those are also considered classic works now and this is just a book about a kingdom with flying sheepies. 

It’s dark though. 

I do think this does a nice job of wrapping up the threads of stories that were begun in the first book – The Meep Sheep – and carried into The Kreep Sheep – and I think this caps things without betraying the reader or the integrity of the story. 

The last thing you wanna do is invest a lot of time into a series that hamstrings you at the end for drama’s sake or just because. You can’t sell out your reader, even for the sake of your own need for twists. If it fits then do it, but to do it just for drama’s sake is not playing fair with someone who has invested a lot of time in your work. 

I think I need to live with the book a little longer to get a better feel for it. I don’t hate it, so that’s a very good sign. I like the arc of it, I like where people begin and end up. So, there are things I like. Just wishy-washy about the entirety of the work. 

Now is the fun of figuring and doing a cover. I had it too easy with the first two books so this one will be a little more difficult. I will sort it out but man-alive it isn’t much fun. 

The problem I always have is doing a cover that represents the work but doesn’t alienate the public, something I haven’t necessarily mastered. I hate handing off the book cover to someone else because I know the book and what I want to convey and this is the one thing, the book, that I get to let my ego run wild on so for egos sake I like to do it all, or as much as I am able. 

GAH!
As for the title, I really liked The Last War as a title because that’s what the story is about – the last war that will destroy the world. The thing is though that the title fit the work but not the series. Another thing I had never thought about since I never wrote these to be a series. Well, a compromise was struck. The new title – The Last Sheep – fits the book (oddly it took the editing for that but darn it, it still counts) and it fits the series. 

Double bonus. 

So, expect to read more about the new book. The 360 page fluffy beast that it is. 

I will get a proper write up about what it is and all that to post next time I talk about it as well. 

– c