Introducing...The Hedgehog King // My Super Secret WIP Is Revealed!!!

It's happening, people! IT'S HAPPENING! The time has finally come to introduce my wee baby, my top-secret project, "The Big Project"...

You guys I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON THIS BOOK FOREVER. (Well, since July. But I've been working really hard on it since then.)

I'm currently on Draft Three. The first edit! GUYS! I'M EDITING.

CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? I AM EDITING!

But enough about me and how editing is killing me. (Though I am publishing an Awkward and Awesome of editing later this month if you want to see me whining about it...)

SOME BASICS:

The Hedgehog King is a stand-alone YA fantasy novel.

It is a fairytale retelling of East of the Sun, West of the Moon (a Norwegian fairy tale), The Enchanted Pig (A Romanian fairy tale) and this random fairytale I saw on The Storyteller a million years ago (Hans My Hedgehog).

Its also based on various Romanian myths and fairytales, Scandinavian myths and fairytales, and other interesting bits I picked up from here and there!

AND NOW THE GOOD STUFF:

 AKA The Pinterest Board...Which can be found here!

And SNIPPETS!

#1

He tried to scream but no sound came out. He couldn’t even open his jaw. His feet were roots and his heart was ice. He couldn’t find the courage to consider reaching for his sword at his hip. 

#2

The branches reached out to grab at [his] face. They tugged and pulled at his clothes as if begging him to stay there, to stay with them forever. He shuddered and shrugged them off.

#3

He snored. Loudly.

 

#4

 

She tried to light the fire once and the spark died instantly, the flint almost falling from her shaking hands. Her eyes watered dangerously and she scrubbed them with her sleeve.

No. She could do this.

#5

           But dawn meant hope and she clung to that hope.  
 

#6

[She] gestured with an arm, but since she was currently flying in spirals like she was an apple peel under a knife it was impossible to tell which way she was pointing.

All the Stuff You Missed:

JULY:
I spent three weeks doing research and world-building and sketching out a very very rough plot. (This took so long because I was taking lots of breaks) and then was on vacation and spent approximately three hours to write out the entire detailed chapter by chapter and scene by scene plot.
And then I spent a couple weeks writing!

AUGUST:
Continued writing! Went back to school and STILL continued writing. Finished the first draft!!!

SEPTEMBER: 
Maybe I actually finished the first draft this month? I'm not sure...Either late in August or early September.
AND THEN I GAVE IT TO ALPHA READERS. THIS IS CRAZY Y'ALL

OCTOBER: 
Waited impatiently for Alpha readers to finish but more or less left the story alone. Did some *ahem* creative character work (I wrote modern AU for my own story) and figured out some plot points I wanted to add.

Decided I wasn't doing NaNoWriMo since I wanted to focus on TBP and its an old story. And everyone knows you can only do NEW novels for NaNo!

Decided at the last minute that my old ideas of NaNo were garbage and did all my NaNo prep in about the last hour or two before November

NOVEMBER:
NANOWRIMO! I made great progress! Made it through the bulk of the rewrite and all the macro edits!


DECEMBER:
Oof. I wasn't sure how much I was going to get done this month...The first two weeks of December were automatically GONE to Finals and even worse THE WEEK BEFORE FINALS...And of course, there was also Christmas and lots of other drama happening this month...


And now I'm just working away. I've never had a book make it to the edits stage, so I have no idea how long this will take.

Hang tight till I figure it out and I'll let you know. (Probably)


JANUARY:
(The first half)

I finished the second draft (on the 9th!) And then I started the line edits!


MK