IT GOT SO BIG, IT'S NOW TOO BIG FOR A SINGLE SUBMISSION!

In the immortal words of any writer who has ever written a serious work, “Hmmm, I think I can write that better.” It IS true that in the passage of time, things can look “fresh” again and this has happened to me here. It’s been a couple of years since it was completed and about a year since I went back and added the chapter headings, February 25th, 2011. That took a bit of time and effort as it wasn’t as simple as dropping them it. I had to place them logically. It did involve some minor rewrite adjustments but nothing truly major.
I did that, reposted it here to FA and it’s been “sitting here” since. Because I knew it would take some time to do, I did not do one other thing at that time and that was to re-page the book into a “normal” book page format. That means fewer words on each page and when I did that the book jumped from 799 pages to 1,021; WHOOT! This was my main intention at coming back to the book this time, but when I saw the dramatic difference in the amount of pages I knew I was in for a long effort to fit it into the new page size. So I decided that I would just “bite the bullet” and go through and review the entire book as I did my re-paging
Every page, from first to last has been reread. Nearly every page has had some adjustment done to it. Many pages of new dialog have been added and some relatively small bits have been removed. A lot of the minor modifications are things related to speech. Having done four novels in the series and I was just starting book five when I decided to suspend doing that in favor of doing this, the characters have fixed speech patterns now and I’ve done a lot of retroactive “matching” so that they “sound the same in all five books. It’s a minor thing in one way, but I feel a very important thing from a continuity standpoint.
Another great advantage of going back so long after the fact and after one has written several more books are that you now know “things in the future”. I have added a good amount of new scenes here and there that “hint” or lightly touch upon the different things to come in the future books. And, at the same time, now knowing the future, I could expand some scenes in knowing better motivations and reasons behind the character’s thoughts or actions. I would say, because I haven’t actually kept a “running total”, that about twenty pages total of new dialog has been added throughout the entire novel.
I so humbly both thank you and apologize at the same time for “causing” you to have to download and reread this again. But I assure you it is well worth it, the story, in sum total, remains the same. There’s not one sudden plot twist or change that has been done. However, at the same time, the book has been majorly altered from its original incarnation and I take and accept full responsibility for that. It’s now grown, with the combination of the re-paging and the added material to a final total of 1,009 pages!
Is this effort worthy of comparison to either Shakespeare or Dickens? Most likely “A Furries’ Life” will fall a bit short. But still, reading and writing was always my strongest and most enjoyed subjects in school and I know of both my talents and abilities. Yes, as the author, OF COURSE I’m biased, but I know enough about writing to know this ain’t lion poop.
So start anew with book one and then move on and through books two, three and four. Now that I’ve done this, it’s back to writing book five and quite likely at least a book six. After that…”we’ll see”.
As always and forever,

“SEMPER FURRY”
Henry A. Smith