‘Evil Reborn‘ is ready. The book debugger, Amparo Baca, is going over it with a red pen to mark possible bugs and correct them before sending the final version of the first edition to the printer.
Writing this second part hasn’t been easy for me. Not easy at all.
I suffered, in fact, from what some veterans call “writer’s block.” From June to the end of August, I kept going over the same thing. I would open the Word file where I had more than two hundred and fifty pages and didn’t know how to structure the final part… It had to be epic!
Why did I freeze up? Because of you.
Receiving so much love during school visits was fantastic, but it also affected me in a way I didn’t expect: you sent me such beautiful messages that I couldn’t disappoint you with a second part that wasn’t up to par. In other words, every time I wrote a page and reread it, a message would form in my head: “What will my reader X think when they see this plot twist?“
Then, on August 18th, while I was in Lanzarote, happy, peaceful, on a balcony facing the sea, ready to start the journey toward the goal… PANIC!
I had written the same passage of the book twice. The same important scene. The first time in May, and the second a few days before. What was happening? I needed to focus.
‘Evil Reborn‘ had to be a good continuation with more excitement, more learning, and more uncertainty; the bad guys had to be worse and the good ones, strengthened against what is to come.
From the beginning, I was clear that this part of the adventure needed to show an evolution from the first. If Mara grows, Hermes grows, the story grows, and you grow… How could I not grow?
How did I break the loop?
One morning, in early September, I locked myself alone with a couple of blank sheets of paper and a pencil. I spent three or four hours in silence, no music, no noise. I needed to visualize the story again and bring it to a successful conclusion. I used the most cinematic part of my brain, the one that makes you feel, smell, get excited, suffer… I wrote the plotlines of ‘The Rebirth of Evil’ on one side, and the milestones that should define the end on the other. In between, the abyss.
Then everything started to flow. Each character stepped forward and told me how they felt at that point in the plot. That pointed out their place in the puzzle. New twists, journeys, movements, action scenes… emerged. And a virtual reader who, from the corner of my eye, gave me their approval.
I had the remaining 25% of the book! The ending was clear, and all I had to do was write about a hundred more pages. When the “cut!” sounded in my head, I didn’t take ten minutes to go to the copy shop to print the first manuscript.
I read it again, and I admit that I enjoyed every page.
When I passed the draft to Amparo, I was more or less convinced of every element of the plot. Everything fit as it should. She liked it a lot! Subsequently, they read it at the publishing house, and the feedback was also great.
So now we’re giving the final touches, eliminating typos, improving certain expressions, eradicating redundancies, and cross-referencing data and definitions.
If all goes well, the book will be available in January.
I hope not to disappoint you.