At the end, I go back to the beginning. . . .

A couple of years ago, I bought these two drawings by Kris Waldherr Arts and Words, for my website. I specifically wanted them for the Queen of Heka page, because they captured the spirit of my novel and its main character, Iset, better known as the goddess Isis.

Just this month, I sent the final 80 pages to my editor/writing coach, Jason Sitzes, and breathed a sigh of relief.

Of course, relief doesn't last. It never does. I immediately started thinking about cleaning up the whole manuscript in preparation for sending it to beta readers and looking for an agent.

That task inevitably led me back to the beginning of the novel. Thank the gods (specifically, thank Isis), I still like the beginning, which goes like this

When you possess the one true, secret name of a god, they say you can do anything, even bring a man back from the dead. Twice.   

Now, consider this. You know me as Isis, and I made myself the Goddess of Ten Thousand Names. None of them my one, true name. But in the beginning, I was just a girl, and my mother named me Iset. I loved Asar, and he called me his darling girl. 

Many thanks to Jason, who kept me on task and demanded I make the novel live up to its opening lines. (And I tried, I really tried!)

I'd be remiss, however, if I failed to recognize the Virginia Beach Breakout Novel Intensive (affectionately known as BONI) where I met Jason and my writing comrade-in-arms, Ellan Otero, and where Lorin Oberweger and Donald Maass dragged the opening lines out of about 200 rather dull and uninspired words.