MATTHEW KEITH

Dreampire. What an evolution this book has gone through so far.

My original concept was a first person story centered around a guy named Trevor: 30-something, washed-up, wanna-be rock star who never did anything with his life and was, at that age, still delivering pizzas and going to community college.

Five chapters before I was finished with the rough draft, I realized how the main plot line could slide neatly into the world I'd created in the Watchers series. I liked the way it fit together so well that I stopped what I was doing and immediately rewrote whole chunks of the book.

But then I realized (after I was done rewriting those chunks, of course) if I was going to call the Dreampire series "a Watchers Novel" I should probably make the main character younger. The Watchers series is young adult before anything else, so it really made sense to change Trevor's age... which is exactly what I did. I had no idea how much changing a character's age would change the story. Phew. So. That was rewrite #2.

Fast forward to today (now) and I'm in the middle of the realization that if I'm going to incorporate so many of the characters from the Watchers of the Night series, I need to change the entire manuscript from first person to third person. For this first book in the Dreampire series, maybe it wouldn't be so important, but in subsequent volumes it will be important for me to be able to discuss the way some of the Astralis people think, and to do that I'll need to be in third person. Not to mention the fact that I know those characters so well, it'll be like visiting old friends. I've begun the conversion from first person to third person and let me tell you; if you're an author and you're considering doing something like this--don't unless you absolutely have to. It's a nightmare. I'm going to do it, I'm committed to making the change now, but it's like doing the worst kind of homework you've ever done in your life.

All that being said, I think I'm still on track to release sometime in July. My editor is ready to kill me, my eyes are burning, and my wife hasn't seen me for the last month because I'm always in the basement either working or writing but, hey--I'm going to have a new book soon so it will be worth it!

As always, thanks for reading!