Why We Rewrote “Raven’s Tears”
By this time, most of you probably know that the edition of Raven's Tears you've read is the "revised and expanded" version. It's true that Michael and I re-published the first book in The Raven & The Iris trilogy in order to add active links to our wiki, wherein we provide extra content and inside information on the world of Menelon and some of the characters who inhabit it. What isn't widely known is that there were other, less obvious reasons for the decision. We've already been asked about them, and we've explained in bits and pieces, here and there, in previous interviews - not in an attempt to be coy, it's just the nature of the medium - but it's plain that there ought to be one place to send the curious for what is, hopefully, the succinct explanation you'll find below.
"A pure and utter act of prostitution"
On second thought, I might have as easily entitled this section, "Pure and utter acts of forgettery." The two went hand in hand, as it turned out.
We originally wrote Raven’s Tears in 1999 to cater to the erotica/porn market. That’s the plain, blunt truth.
Michael and I were in a sort of career hiaitus in 1999. Writing had, up to that point, always been a big part of our relationship. We had a fantasy setting that we'd been fleshing out for years, and we really wanted to write in that setting. We wanted to write the kind of story we'd like to read, and decided to leave in the sex - no, we decided to amp up the sexual content, actually, in order to appeal to what everyone said was the lucrative and fast-growing erotica market.
That sequence of decisions complicated the project pretty badly, as it turns out. In 1999, fantasy AND erotica in the same title was enough to make all the editors and agents who agreed to look at it quail in their boots. We got a lot of "thanks, but we have no idea what to do with this" responses, and in that time, that was the end of it. There was not the market for indie-published books we see today.
We kinda shrugged, put the manuscript away and, in the passing of time, we managed to forget completely that we'd written it specifically to appeal to the erotica/porn market.
An Unfunny Comedy of Errors
Two years ago, we found ourselves yet again in a career transition. Michael needed to retire from building for physical reasons, and I was heartily tired of freelancing. Indie publishing had become a Very Big Deal. Was it time to try writing as a career, again?
We thought we'd give it a try. We knew we had the original manuscript of Raven's Tears and the extended plot - it seemed as good a place as any to start.
Then, a lot of fuckery happened, resulting in us realizing that we needed to rewrite Raven’s Tears extensively in order to make it represent the (hopefully much better) writers we are now.
It turned out that manuscript we were working from was an early version, and I hadn't double-checked that. We believed some things that we were told about that manuscript that turned out not to be completely true, and then acted on them. We spent quite a bit of money on those bad decisions, actually. My bad - I should have made sure that the version we originally published was up to our new, higher, and more exacting standards for our work, but I did not. The egg was on my face by the time I realized my mistakes, but much too late to correct them as they stood.
To be clear, here: Michael and I don't blame anyone else for this folly but ourselves. And, we learned a lot from it.
Blood in the Water
The success of indie authors and indie publishing has spurred a boom similar to a gold rush, and wherever you find money, you're going to find those who want to fleece you out of it. If I have any advice to offer to anyone considering publishing their work independently, it would be to double-check and triple-check anyone who wants you to pay them to help you market your book, but who adamantly refuses to put some of their own skin in the game when it comes to its success. If it's unreasonable to ask them to pin their success on sales, then make them be very, very clear about what their measures of success actually are. If they won't give you a straight answer, delete the contact and move on to the next - or the next pool of blood in the publishing pool may well be yours.
Things past redress are now with me past care. - the Richard II, Act 2, scene 3
Once we recovered from the dazzling series of poor choices in the original launch of Raven's Tears, we spent months rewriting the manuscript and inserting the live links to extra content, getting it proofread, editing and correcting - and the second launch has gone much, much better than the first.
Moving On!
If you've read this far - bless you - you now know what is worth knowing about the rewrite and re-launch of Raven's Tears. It's not a pretty story - it may not even be a very interesting story - but the best part about it is that its done. I can't properly tell you how good it feels to have Raven's Tears - and all that accompanied it - published, and largely behind me. The silver lining that makes it all worth it is that the process gave us months to write a fat first draft of that second book as well as about 80% of the third, a sequence of events that sets us up to offer our readers a COMPLETE TRILOGY within one year's time!
The second book of The Raven & The Iris trilogy, entitled Dead Man's Trigger is intended for publication in April 2015. The lies just got deadlier.
AE Matson is an author, and Creative Director, at Metaphor Publications. She's also a textile fiend, SFGiants fan, aspiring Buddha, RPGer, tech-geeky, crone, corsair. It's all about the stories. What's yours?
