Alan R Marble

The last of the draft manuscripts are out to volunteer readers; I won't be entertaining more requests after this point, sorry!  The main reason is that I am looking to begin revising shortly.  I have gotten feedback from a number of you and am trying to hold off on my next rewrite as long as I can to get the most input possible but at the same time I don't want to wait too long.  Starting this week I will be re-reading the manuscript myself, and once I am done I will start on the next draft.

So where does it go from here?  Those of you who are still in the process of reading are more than welcome to continue offering input and thoughts even after I start my revision - even after it is done!  The current goal is to have a final revision done up sometime in March so that I can begin looking for places to submit the manuscript to and see what happens from there.

Once again a big thank you to everyone who has read it and given me some feedback to go on, your thoughts and opinions have been immeasurably helpful to me!

I've added a few short stories that I wrote a couple of years ago.  Some of you may have seen them, some of you may not.  Go ahead and take a look at the stories section (the link is at the top of the page) and take a look if you like!  I may update this section more in the future as I have the time and inspiration to pen a few more short stories, but for now my attentions are focused elsewhere.

I've decided to go ahead and cave in to the pressure and tone down the swearing in The Silver Token.


No, it's not going away.  I'm not going to clean it up to a "G" rated version, but after giving it some thought I have decided that it might not hurt to at least throttle back a bit on the language.  I still think that as it stands, the expletives used are valid for the setting and that the characters would likely be talking that way, however by taking it down a few notches I shouldn't really be detracting from the "authenticity" of the characters while hopefully making it a wee bit more palatable to my more sensitive readers.

So take heart, gentle readers; the next version will make your ears bleed a little less.

Now that I've been getting back a little feedback on my draft manuscript of The Silver Token, I've decided that it's time to go ahead and create a blog/website dedicated to my writing endeavors.  Over the next few days we'll be fleshing the site out with writing samples and the like, and I'll be keeping it current with updates on my current writing projects.  It is likely to be evolving a lot at first so if you happen to be one of my first readers then have a little patience while all of the kinks get worked out, so to speak.

Since currently I am only working on The Silver Token, it would make sense that any current updates be devoted to that particular work!  As many of you know I met my goal of completing the first draft of the manuscript by December 31, 2011, and it has since seen a first revision to help flesh out some of the more glaring holes.  The current revision is now in the hands of perhaps a dozen or so volunteer readers and reviewers, a few of which have gotten their input back to me, and I'm feeling encouraged by what some of you are saying.  I will continue to await feedback from those who are still in the process of finishing up the draft but I am looking to start the next revision sometime around the first of the month.

Let me offer a sincere thank you to those of you who have taken the time to review my work thus far, your support and feedback has been immensely valuable to me!  Stay tuned for more updates on the manuscript to come.  I'm sure I'll need your support when I take the plunge and start submitting the thing ...