I had to rewrite these stories about 3 times last year in order to complete a merge of them. I wanted to discard “Alyce” altogether, but I just felt a lingering presence in it that wouldn’t go away. However, I didn’t add much new material, like new characters. This means there are now at least 5 things that could be improved and you only notice these when the two stories are combined.

Not that this makes the book low-quality—I mean, no book is PERFECT. (Except I know many people will vouch for their currently favorite historical romance or YA fantasy author. But aside from that, no book is ever perfect.)

• 1 Prince Roderick needs more friends. I didn’t give him any in "Alyce" because it was a really short story, but now it looks like he’s kind of unpopular. He only knows one silent man who helps him in his work, and he breezes in and rescues Victoria all on his own like a sort of anomaly.
• 2 Mrs. Corkum and the English travelers are a blip. This was an area where Victoria saw a parallel family to hers and learned how they looked. Now that Victoria isn’t such a brat, she just travels with these people for a couple of really odd chapters.
• 3 Ignacio was meant to be a hero, but he got more and more sinister and we aren’t told why. One of the few things I added was a small scene where Ignacio runs into Victoria later. Bella has run away from him, but they end up back together and Victoria doesn’t ask about it. WHY NOT?
• 4 The Hirado. Now that he’s helping her instead of out to get her, it’s not clear what his character is about. I tied him into the “Alyce” part of the story by saying he’s warning her about what’s to come with the king. That’s interesting, but it’s still hazy what he represents in the story.
• 5 King Felipe is now absolutely boring. The whole story builds towards him inviting Victoria to set her up, but his personality disappeared somewhere between the time "Alyce" was published and the current story. I didn’t iron him out on purpose, it just happened. This area is still pretty funny (when she’s chased around the castle by the thugs) but Felipe contributes nothing at all.

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And there will be more updates.

Victoria: A Tale of Spain (which I now call informally “Victoria/Alyce” because it is a merge of both stories) is an updated version of two stories that used to be in a series and are still listed that way on Goodreads. But you can ignore that because now it is one middle-grade novel set in Spain in the 1600s. In fact, I made a new listing for Victoria/Alyce—Victoria: A Tale of Spain (New Edition.) One issue with “Alyce” was that it really plunked down in the middle of the story and didn’t give a lot of background on the characters. Putting Victoria on the front end of it helps to explain how “Alyce” happened and what motivates the characters.

And the first part of this new story—which I must stress IS new—is set in The Alcazar, a real castle in central Spain. I visited it about three times, years ago. I’m grateful for being able to stand in a real building of this sort and not have to rely on my imagination. Being there multiple times, especially, helped me emulate the feeling of living in this castle. It’s actually someone’s home—home of the family of Duke Carlos with his many daughters—and it might be difficult for us to imagine, with our very different houses and conveniences, that it was a place to live. Not a historical set, with historical costumes—I wanted an unselfconsciousness about it that is a major part of being authentic if you describe any type of family life. Those little details like experiencing the climate of central Spain (it gets really chilly at night!) flesh out the world in a concrete way that I’m glad about.

Victoria has to run away at midnight after learning her older sister has disappeared. Although I always saw this castle during the day, it wasn’t hard to think it could be very spooky at night. And when you’ve got an intruder stalking her—who she doesn’t know yet is a friend in disguise—Victoria is going to be pretty upset and it makes for the kind of unsettling atmosphere that is a big part of the journey. She learns there are things she needs to know as she gets ready for the King’s ball.

And there will be more updates.

The published books on my website are approx the same length, about 52K, except for Consuela. It's a little bit shorter. At first I presented many books as novellas, individual longer short stories, long collections of stories, or even the occasional novel. But as I worked with the books, stories took a more mainstream shape. Novels got cut. Novellas merged with each other. Extra stories that padded out books disappeared. All of them became a very similar page count (250-280 pages) and suddenly all the little random "stories" had been replaced by streamlined books. 

I didn't start out with this in mind, because although my stories were often an awkward length, I've read and enjoyed books of any length and I didn't plan to add or crop words just to fulfill someone's idea of a book. But I'm glad it happened. Nowhere is this new streamlined kind of book more visible than in "Victoria." It started as a novella of 30K words, then it shrank to a much shorter story. Then it blended with "Alyce," an even shorter story (about 18K) that had been once released as part of the same series. After I went back to the old, longer version of Victoria--keeping the merge with Alyce--I had to rewire my mind to realize this is a novel now. I'd become programmed to automatically think of Victoria and Alyce as short. But together, they became a full novel. (Well, for older kids, about age 12. An adult would probably call this a novella--but it IS for kids, so that's just fine.)

How nice! 

A Year with the Harrisons shrank to become a similar length and when two of the Facets stories were removed, Facets of Fantasy was also comparable. And so is Bellevere House, which started longer, but after a special rewrite just about Ed and Faye's relationship, became exactly the same length as the others. 

Yes! My books, like tangled hair, got themselves straightened out. 

And there will be more updates. 

One issue that any storyteller will encounter in the book market these days is deceptiveness. I’m not speaking of cloudy interactions with other authors, insincere networking, and unclear feedback. I’m speaking of the way stories are actually written. Far too many readers are used to seeing a “real” story laced under the surface of the so-called narrative. They push aside the story on the surface and automatically reinterpret to find the content they believe is hidden.

This can be legitimate if the author actually intended it that way. But not every book is this way and such thinking easily becomes aggressive, pushing what is stated to be there aside in favor of what you’re sure you see. People who become accustomed to this approach will start simply imagining there must be a “real” story beneath anything they come across.

They will start to read The Book That Isn’t There.

This has often happened with my books because the whole point of them is to make things clear, to make the story simple so we all know what we’re talking about. But if you’re used to reading this way, you’ll automatically dismiss what I’m saying and start getting into a very murky kind of creativity. I couldn’t possibly have simply written a story to read. I MUST be hiding something. If I say Bella in Victoria: A Tale of Spain is sad and lonely because her parents don’t like her personality, I must have really said they have been trying to force her into an arranged marriage but won’t admit it and the other sisters don’t know this.

But that isn’t what I said. It simply isn’t. People who don’t read my books as straightforwardly as a child would are reading The Book That Isn’t There. What you see really is what you get. I am up to literally nothing. If you think my book is boring, that’s because you really think it is boring. It’s not that there’s a hidden plot underneath that would make it more interesting to you and you don’t know WHY I’m not developing that plot. It’s not because I don’t know how to write my book and if you asked me little personal questions about it perhaps you could get me to admit the story underneath. It’s because you don’t know how to read my book and are trying to make it another book.

A Book That Isn’t There.
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And there will be more updates.