For various reason I pulled out of duty digital storage a novel that I had written ten years ago back in the distant annals of 2010.

This novel was the first attempt to set a story in the fictional universe where Vulcan’s Forge takes place. In fact, without that previous setting creation I doubt that there would ever have been a Vulcan’s Forge as the setting gave me the answer as to what the McGuffin and core plot elements I had been searching for.

However, that manuscript when presented to the first batch of beta readers fell flat and I determined that the flaws were so deeply seated it would require a complete re-write from the ground up and place it aside.

Thinking it might be worth revisiting that story I loaded the manuscript up on my iPad and began my re-read.

The flaws from 2010 are still there and the book would have to be written over again from page 1 to be salvageable. Moreover, I can see where I rushed through sentences and scenes hastily putting things down without taking the time to let them breathe and create the tone that would have been required to sustain the tale. Still, the core conflict, characters, and plot elements all work. This is a book I can make work and now with a decade’s more experience I can see how to do that.

I am also in the middle of craft a new outline for a new story. The couple of sentence description interested my editor and so I have at least two worthy projects to chase.