We wrapped up editing on OUR SAVAGE ANATOMIES last week. Thank the gods, I tell ya.
That was work!
Some pieces require minimal editing. Some require...much more. With OSA, I felt it was in great shape when I turned it in to Donald Armfield at Hybrid Sequence Media. It was...but needed cleaning up and some tightening up, which required the much more work mentioned above.
When I wrote OSA, it was right after I'd completed a hardcore, intense novel called Birdland. That one wrung out my brain. It's one of the best things I've ever written and I hope to find it a home sooner than later. That said, my brain needed a break. I needed something perhaps lighter to follow-up Birdland. I'll get to the details and events that went into the creation of OSA over the next couple of months in blog posts--there's a lot of amusing details, trust me--but for now the point is, I needed that break and rolled with something I rarely explore: the more familiar tropes of werewolves and vampires, though from an atypical perspective, as you will see.
The novel was written fast and loose. The process was just to be open to whatever wanted to be a part of the story. I threw in the kitchen sink, the piping beneath said sink, the hair stuck in the pipes...everything.
That is why, with the editing process, though I thought it good where it was, that fast and loose mindset required clarification and the already mentioned cleaning up...along with some of the usual editing elements.
So, it was work, all for the greater good. For the story.
It made me step back and look at some other long pieces. As I waited for the next batch of edits from the editor/publisher, I dug into other long pieces, keeping my editing chops in high gear. I reedited three novellas: The Ouroboros Ballads, which required a fair amount of cleaning up; Souls at Zero, that required barely anything but minor tweaks (I knew this before I started the reediting for that one as it's perhaps the cleanest piece of long fiction I've written, though right now I've started a re-read and possible edit of a novel called Mother Chaos that I've spotted no edits needed so far, so perhaps I do know what I am doing); and The Great God Pollock, the latest completed novella, one that was probably just going to get another edit anyway, but with the mindset locked in hardcore, yeah, that one didn't require much editing, but is much sharper now.
Point being, editing OSA kicked my writer's brain into top editing mode and I love being there again, seeing everything with crystal clarity and snipping away without hesitation, haha...
So, that's my brief update, with more news about my upcoming 46000-word novel/novella/whatever soon. Excuse me, my 42000-word novel/novella/whatever; editing chopped off almost 4000 words!
Over the next couple of months until release day (September 26. 2026), I'll blog details and more about OUR SAVAGE ANATOMIES, to pique your interest so perhaps you'll pick up a copy and go along for one wild ride!
There's a lot on the way!
This art comes courtesy of Zhou Song.
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