I’m going to do the unthinkable and toss 101K words down the drain today. This particular manuscript is one that I have desperately held on to believe would be a diamond in the rough after I finished it in December 2015. It’s been sitting around for a year and for the last few weeks, I’ve hunkered down to edit and revise… and rewrite.

But sometimes, some of our stuff is just plain crap, as I’m finally coming to realize this morning, on the fifth, sixth or seventh attempt at editing and rewriting. Either that or as a fellow author told me, “you’ve matured as a writer.” And so if I have, I’ve come to the realization today that this is one book I cannot salvage, no matter how I dress it up with an exclusive photo and amazing cover design and rebranding of the series.

I can’t even send it to my editor it’s that bad. I can’t put my name on it even when just a few days ago, I was willing to do just that, close to announcing that it would be released in March of this year even if it meant bad reviews. But it’s not going to happen. I’m not about to do it just because I have to have more books out. Because if the books are crap, that’s not good for my brand either. There’s such a thing as having pride for one’s work and this is one instance where I have nothing but frustration for having written something so badly.

Maybe the new version will be released eventually, like 2019 or something, but at this point, I can’t keep trying to fix something that cannot be fixed. Not when everything about it is wrong.

And so Loving Riley is getting officially shelved today. I just can’t keep fixing what’s beyond repair.

Sometimes you just have to start over.

Edited to add: there’s an update!