I have new titles for Manhunt 1 and Manhunt 2! The first is called The Haven, and the second is The Hunt. I was discussing important elements of the story with my husband and called the little house in the woods a haven – at which he interjected and said that he liked that and that I should use it. Well, it fits the
whole story on a broader level, so it’s now a title. The second is undoubtedly a hunt and trap story, so The Hunt was always appropriate.
This is by no means the first time I’ve renamed these two books. The sequels to The Dark have had an interesting, tumultuous history… The Dark was always what it is. However, the sequel to The Dark was originally Reign of the A******* (it’s a spoiler). Then, I decided that the first part of the book could be its own story, and it became Surrender + Reign of the A*. After writing a few more books in the series, I decided there needed to be (there had to be) more that happened between The Dark and Surrender, so a hunter story developed with a very weak-spined Malk and a cold Saty. And Manhunt was born.
A few years passed by, I rewrote The Dark almost from scratch, loved the new story, and kept making faces at Manhunt, Surrender, and Reign. When I was doing editing read-throughs I often skipped all three stories (even though Manhunt was only about forty pages long) because they made me cringe. I hated the character development, the action, how
things unfolded, the decisions the characters made, you name it. They just didn’t match with how the characters had changed, grown, and developed in my new version of The Dark.
In
late 2013 I decided that I was tired of hating three of my books and
sat down and opened up a brand new document and just started writing. I
wrote over 300 pages in a matter of a year. The ‘new’ Manhunt ended up replacing the original, Surrender, and Reign. Perhaps five scenes of the original stories ended up in the new ones.
The rest was brand new material. So if you’ve read them before, you haven’t.
Very recently, Shawn and I sat down and talked
about how to divide the new monstrosity up. I listed the important
events that happen throughout the story in chronological order, and we
chose a spot to split it and listed what needed to be added to help
flesh the stories out on their own. The Haven is currently 156 pages, and The Hunt is 228 pages. The Haven focuses on (who’s left of) the gang from The Dark, and The Hunt focuses on both the main characters from the previous two books and the agents in the northwestern agency of Division 53.
I
still have a lot more work to do on both of the new books, but they’re
in infinitely better shape than they were when I started their rewrite in 2013, and I’m actually happy with them. Now I just have to edit
them, tighten them up, add in the necessary scenes that I have yet to
focus on, and somewhere along the line I have to format the book into chapters. I learned a long time ago that it’s easier to put the chapters in when you’re nearly done, at least in this series.
Hopefully I can finish this edit soon, and The Haven can follow The Dark onto shelves and pave the way for The Hunt and the rest of the series! I really enjoy The Hunt and the characters it has. 😉
-E.M.