C. S. Thurman

5 years ago, I sat in my Creative Writing classroom at Utah Valley University (UVU), talking with my fellow classmates and a teachers aid when our conversation turned to my favorite topic. Dragons! I don’t remember exactly how that conversation went, but it was eventually brought up that I hadn’t seen many stories with dragon zombies in it. Of course there have been stories, I just hadn’t found any yet, but I was then told by the aid that perhaps I should write a story about a dragon zombie.

My mind began to buzz as a story started to take shape in my mind. I took that concept and I built upon it a rough idea that I then brought with me into NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and I wrote 50,000 words of the story. To give you a bit of an idea, most YA/Middle Grade novels are about 50,000 words to 80,000. I was so close to what I had envisioned that I could almost taste it! Fast forward a few months and I’m now in a different writing class where I’m proffering my first chapter for the teacher and fellow students to read and critique. At the same time I was listening to the Writing Excuses Podcast and they were talking about what promises to the reader am I making within the first page and ultimately, the first chapter. After receiving a lot of feedback I realized I needed change the story to fit what it was that I wanted the reader to take from it and what kind of story I wanted them to enjoy. I kept the first chapter and started the process of rewriting the rest of the story.

It took me a long time but I didn’t finish writing the story until the spring of 2021. 3 years! I wiped my brow and thought I was done, thinking that I could quickly move to the submitting part of my manuscript to publishers. But my loving wife reminded me that I should have it professionally edited before submitting it to anyone. I consented as it seemed like the best thing to do. Fast forward another 2 years and I finally got my manuscript back from an editor who had been so kind to work on my project. I quickly started edits on the document, hoping that the 2 month window I had to edit and change things was enough time to get it all done.

I underestimated parenthood.

I got a lot of editing done in April and into May, but work and family life became crazy busy and my family also went on a few trips that knocked me off of my groove, and I never made that June deadline I had set for myself. I slowly got back into it as July went back to normal and when August hit, I knew that I needed to finish my edits by the end of the month.

The reason this has been such a big deal to get it done by June or September is because Shadow Mountain only has a seven day window every 3 months to submit your finished manuscript. I have been waiting ever since I got my book back from the editor at the beginning of April to turn this sucker in that I didn’t want to wait another 3 more months for December to roll around. So I pushed myself until I had finished all of my edits. Happy with my new and revised story, I submitted it to Shadow Mountain Publishing with the hope that I will hear back from them in 12-16 weeks (3-4 months) as stated on their webpage.

From start to finish, it has been a crazy 5 years since I first came up with the idea, but I am happy that I finally submitted my manuscript to a publisher! Now comes the waiting game as I wait to hear what they have to say about it.

More to come?

Moving forward, I hope to be able to continue writing in my other works in progress. I of course want to finish Muldrix and give that a proper ending as I’m not nearly half way through the story line. I hope that I can give it the ending it deserves. I just have to read up on what I wrote to get back into the groove.

I still have other stories that I will be working on too and I’ll post updates about those as well. With the completion of March of the Necromancer I need to start outlining the second book so I have a general idea of where I want the story to go.

You may be surprised that I have so many ideas, but I have always been like that and have always had ideas forming in my head. When I hear a person say they couldn’t do that or that they wrote 1 story and are done, I’m always like “why?” For me the story ideas keep coming and they can’t stop coming. The only thing I can do is find ways to incorporate them into my current works of fiction or to write them down and come back to them later.