I’ve been hunkered down going through the (relatively light) editorial revisions on the third Faerie book, Faerie After (now the official title!) and also making some final edits of my own. I find myself wanting to hold onto this book, partly because an writer can edit any book pretty much forever, but also partly because Liza, the protagonist, has been part of my life for so long now. I wrote the opening to Bones of Faerie in 1993, spent a decade becoming good enough a writer to tell her story, and started writing it in earnest in 2003. Even counting from the later date, that’s nearly a decade that Liza has been part of my inner writing and emotional landscape. And while I may tell other Faerie stories from different points of view one day (still thinking about that), with this book, Liza’s arc really does feel complete. So I have to let her go–not today, but soon–to live the rest of her life in that mysterious place where characters who’ve moved beyond their writers’ stories live.
Because of course if I don’t, her final story remains mine alone, and all we’ve both been through will have been for nothing, after all. 🙂