I’m sorry to say that as it stands, On Hallowed Lanes just isn’t good enough to share. The travelogue and central plot are good, but the other half of the backbone and a great deal of problems surrounding one of the main characters just feel juvenile and half-assed in a way that can’t be fixed in edits.
I won’t push mediocre work. I just won’t. Business-wise it would make more sense to have three novels out this year rather than two, but not if that comes with the cost of releasing something I know I can do better.
My plan is to maybe revisit this one in the spring. There are too many elements of the story I actually like not to rewrite it. But I’ve already spent three months trying to pound this sucker out and that’s a problem. It needs to be redone when I have other projects out the door. If I gut the story-within-the-story element, it should bring the novel back down to a respectable novella size, maybe 60k words or so as opposed to the 90k it’s at right now.
For those of you waiting for the next Rankin Flats adventure, sorry. You’ll have to wait a while longer.
The Rankin Flats Observer 