Crossed Souls - Rewrites

Crossed Souls, the first book in my Twisted Soul Magic series, was my first foray into paranormal romance. This was a story that started out in my head as something so much different than it came out when I wrote it. It also was my first attempt at writing reverse harem, and y’all… that shit is hard.

So, even though I did a ton of prep work going into the series (my series bible is more than 6,500 words, which is roughly two full chapters of writing), at times I felt like the story sort of got away from me. Trying to keep all the voices, goals, and quirks of each character unique while keeping the story on track was definitely a challenge I felt like I started to lose as the book went on.

Despite all of that, I was happy with it when it came out… until I started to read the reviews. Because the readers weren’t loving it. You guys thought Willa was naive and stupid and let her life happen to her (a fair assessment, unfortunately, and not at all how I set out to write her), that some of the plot got repetitive, and that my world building left a lot to be desired.

See, as much as I try not to, I read every review and I like to think I’m pretty good at taking constructive criticism. Now, when someone leaves me a 1-star and tells me my story sounds like it was written by a man (yes, that’s an actual review I’ve gotten), I can laugh that shit off. But, when a bunch of people say, “I kind of hate your heroine,” or, “your worldbuilding doesn’t make sense,” I listen.

It’s because of reviews like that that I’ve decided to do some major rewrites on Crossed Souls to make it a better intro into the series. I’ve put Twisted Little Games and Emerald Hills Elite off for now (no idea when it’ll be releasing) because this needs to happen first. I’m doing a full (MASSIVE) rewrite on the entire manuscript of Crossed Souls to try and improve it.

So, instead of updating you on the progress of me writing TLG, I’ll be updating you for now on my rewriting progress and giving you peeks into the differences in the story from what it started out as to what it’s turning into.

For now, all I’ve managed to get through is chapter one. But, it got some pretty significant rewrites already. Let’s look at the beginning.

This is the way the book originally started. What I was thinking when I wrote this scene was that she was having a dream, one where her powers were activating and she was confused. She was coming into her first contact with her Guardians, though she didn’t know who they were or what was happening in any way.

In hindsight, I can see that to the reader, this whole thing is pretty confusing. It made sense in my head at the time because I knew where the story was going, but as a reader, you didn’t.

So, I changed the whole thing (though she’s still having a dream) to be more conversational, to have a bit more of Willa’s personality in it, and to hopefully have it make more sense what’s happening. I don’t even think before it was necessarily clear that she was dreaming, but with the new version, I really tried to punch that fact home.

So, you can see that the story has changed already quite a bit, and there’s lots more to do. I’ll keep you updated on how the rewrites are going, but so far I’m a lot happier with where the story is headed. Have you read Crossed Souls yet? If so, leave me a comment and let me know!