Guardian Angel

Original Manuscript

De: Cassiopeia Fletcher

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Introduction

Welcome to the very first book I ever finished (I say “finished” because I wrote a lot before I ever got this far…), please allow me a moment to warn you about what you’re in for:

This book is burnable trash.

Seriously, it’s really bad.

I know, I know; you’re wondering why in the world I would publish a book knowing it’s bad; well, allow me another moment, and I will explain.

I wrote this book from start to finish in January of 2007, the year I turned twenty. As previously stated, I had written a lot of fiction, but I had not yet finished anything and, worse, I had exactly one semester of fiction classes under my belt from a community college; a class in which I learned basically nothing. Which, to be fair, was more on me than my teacher. He was (probably, I don’t really remember ^^;) a good teacher, but I had Big Fish syndrome because my parents had told me for basically ever that I was the best writer ever.

(Way to set me up for failure, Mom and Dad; appreciate it.)

So, anyway, I wrote this book in six weeks when I was 19-going-on-20, and I was unbelievably proud of myself. I thought for sure that this was going to be my breakout novel and it would make me famous and rich and I would be lauded as the next J. K. Rowling and I would be able to buy my parents a fantastic retirement home and live a comfortable life with my adoring family.

I was, admittedly, a very naïve 19-going-on-20.

Needless to say, this book was never published. In fact, no publisher even looked at it twice, and that’s assuming they bothered to look a first time. Same with literary agents. And here’s me, all of a wide-eyed 20, wondering why no one could appreciate my genius.

I was also a rather arrogant and self-congratulating 19-going-on-20.

Still, it’s not so much the story and plot that are bad as the execution. And the characterizations. And the dialogue. And the pacing. Grammar. Sentence structure. Spelling.

Okay, so it’s pretty much all around bad (and the closest thing it’s seen to an editor was my Word 2007 spelling and grammar check fifteen years ago).

But!—

And here is the important part

—ten years later, I reached a place as a writer where I could not only recognize how bad of a book this is, I could fix it.

Cue Summer of 2017, an almost exact decade after I had written this novel (and incidentally had the first ten pages thoroughly eviscerated by Orson Scott Card by the crazy happenstance of him being a creative writing teacher at my university accompanied by my uncharacteristically good luck to manage a placement in his Spring 2009 class before it filled up within the first 15 minutes of being open), when I decided to revisit this atrocity of a novel and try to implement the changes that had been recommended to me eight years before (in said ego-crushing session with Professor Card).

I still wanted to tell the whole story, but with help, I realized that telling the whole story in one sitting was not the best plan ever, so I broke it up from one novel into three, aged down the MC, threw in a little more diversity (not necessarily for diversity’s sake but because I ended up expanding the story in previously unexpected ways), gave my bad-guy a stronger presence, and simplified the plot-per-book ratio (assuming there even is such a thing).

The new book still isn’t perfect, but that isn’t the point of publishing it, or this book you have in your hands. Rather, the point is to show all you budding writers out there (or at least the ones willing to spend money on this book) that there is hope; things do get better...

To be continued in the book. I hope to see you there!