Category Archives: Works

Updates on works by Jordan McCollum

Works

Bragging rights

I’m so excited! Judged by the wonderful Annette Lyon and hosted by the illustrious Michelle Mitchell of Scribbit fame, the March 2009 Write-Away Contest centered around the theme of “sweet.” And this morning, they announced the winner:

Me!

I know you’re dying to see the winning entry, so here you go:

The stereotypical image of the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden is an apple. I must respectfully dissent from popular opinion here—if I had to choose a modern fruit to grow on the tree of knowledge of good and evil, I’d have to go with the plum. . . .

Read the rest of “The Bitter and the Sweet.”

Aside from some very decadent-sounding truffles, I’m getting some serious bragging rights. I should also thank Sarah and my mother for their help editing the essay. Yes, I’m revealing a deep dark secret—I’m not a prize-winning author on my first draft. And of course, thanks to Annette for judging and Michelle for hosting!

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Works

Finito

One of these days I’m going to run out of ways to say it, but once again: I’m done! I was worried about the word count there for a while, and there are still some issues that are bugging me and some scenes that need to be fixed (and maybe added), but I just typed “the end.” (Okay, so first I said it over on Twitter.) And despite my concerns, I reached an acceptable 84,000 words.

I’ve got a page of notes of things I want to change, and I want to go through and work on physical descriptions of people and settings (especially the weather). Sometimes I get through first drafts and it’s like this whole story has taken place in a white room with blank-faced people—or at least it could have, from how much description I’ve given.

So the tentative title is Evidence of Things Not Seen. I’m kind of happy with it, even though it does seem a little long. It parallels nicely with Duty of the Priest:

  • They’re structurally parallel: both use prepositional phrases with an ‘of’ head.
  • Both come from scripture references (Duty is a rephrasing of Doctrine and Covenants 20:46 and Evidence is somewhat obviously from Hebrews 11:1.)
  • The first words of the titles, Duty and Evidence, aside from being handy handles to toss around, are also words with strong law enforcement connotations. Appropriate for FBI-themed novels, don’t you think?

Once again, I’m off to revisions!

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Works

Revisions, Round One

Well, three months after I started the manuscript, I think I’m finally done with round one revisions on Duty of the Priest. (I have to be careful about using that working title too much; I’ll get attached and I know they’re going to change it!) My friend is done with her parallel story and I’ve spent the last three days “correlating” them—making sure that they’re consistent wherever they overlap. I’m a one-woman correlation committee 😉 .

At this point, I’ve gotten it as good as I can get it while it’s all still this “close.” So now I’m sending it off to my wonderful critique partner for feedback—and to get some distance.

And, of course, now I can really focus on the sequel.

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Works

I just couldn’t wait

I know, I know, it’s terrible of me, but I just couldn’t wait to get started on a sequel to my latest manuscript. I’m still revising the last book (Duty of the Priest, maybe?), but I just had to get the opening chapters out of the way of this book. They were driving me crazy, and I was starting to think I was going to forget some good lines I wanted (and I probably did).

Apparently I’m a glutton for punishment.

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Works

Aaand Fin

1 Comment

Whoa. Eight weeks after starting my latest work in progress, I just finished the last scene! I have a couple places I’ll need to add scenes now, but I’ve ended up with 80,000 words in less than two months. (And I said I wasn’t going to do NaNo!)

And you know what it’s time for now!

Dance of joy!

 

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Works

New WIP!

It’s about time—three months after giving birth to my daughter, I’m starting a new work in progress. The idea was a joint effort between me and one of my best friends. We’ve outlined the plot for four POV characters and are both hard at work on parallel stories. Murder, mayhem and much fun will ensue!

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