Revisiting the Library

Re-reading your own books as an author can be weird. Let me explain...

With The Shadow Sisters off to my editor, I've had a little free time of late. And I've spent that time going back and re-reading one of my own novels, The Miranda Project. This is the second time I’ve decided to go back and read one of my own books for fun and not as part of the writing process. I'm already about two thirds of the way through it.

And with today being the 244th Anniversary of when they discovered Uranus, and with it's moon of Miranda being the titular star of the story, I figured today was as good a day as any to talk about the book and my experiences with re-reading it so far.

This isn't the first time I've reread one of my own stories. Last year, I reread The Stairs in the Woods in the lead up to getting the new cover made and released, and enjoyed it — but I had a hard time separating myself from it as the author. I would find things that I wanted to update because, since it was my first book, I had evolved as a writer since then, and I could see areas where I had quite clearly improved .

That's not to say I didn't enjoy the book. I still love that story, and it has a very special place in my heart as my first novel. I was going through a healing process at the time and I think the story captures that quite well. But still, every so often I would read something and think Oh, I should change that.

Not so with The Miranda Project. I’m really enjoying this. And at no point have I needed to stop myself from going into editor mode as I read. That's not to say that I haven't noticed the occasional thing that the writer I am now might change the sentence structure around on. But it's not taking me out of the experience.

As an author, even reading other people's work can be difficult sometimes because I have a tendency to see what I would have done differently. Either that, or I'm dissecting it to see what I can learn from it to improve my own writing. To actually be able to relax into a book is harder than it used to be before I started writing. I think that's probably natural for a lot of writers — Just as it can be pretty embarrassing to go back and read our old work sometimes. The growth really sticks out at us.

Maybe that's why re-reading The Miranda Project has been so much easier for me than The Stairs in the Woods was. Stairs was my first book, whereas Miranda was my fifth. I wrote an entire trilogy of books between the two.

As for The Miranda Project itself, I've always thought it was a strong book. Unfortunately, sci-fi does not sell as well as fantasy (at least in my case), and I really do wish more people would check this story out. Like all of my books, this is a character-driven tale where the sci-fi elements are designed to support the story and the characters. And Alex and Hannah are two of my favorites. Their story feels natural despite the story's supernatural and sci-fi elements.

If you're wondering what the story is about, I'll give you a quick primer:

Alex is on the run. He used to do work for a shadowy government agency in a dystopian future where humans have started to populate the solar system. When he was a teenager, Alex was brainwashed to become an assassin for the Centralized World Government (or CWG).

Only Alex isn't like most people. He and his fellow agents all have psionic powers. Most are telepaths or telekinetics. Alex is a teleporter — imagine Jason Bourne with the powers of Nightcrawler from the X-Men — that's Alex. That's his story. And Hannah... Well let's just say she's all tied up in it somehow too (no spoilers).

So if any of that sounds like something you'd be interested in, feel free to give it a shot. In the meantime, I'm going back to my reading. Like I said, I'm two thirds of the way through it, and things are getting interesting...

Editor's note for the ladies: Chapter 28 is the best (wink wink).

Author's note: For Fuck's sake, Vanessa! Lol!