I’m currently revising the second book in the Antediluvian Adventures series.

The Seagull Rebellion is the title of the second book. In this book the main character is Maralin – a thirteen-year-old girl who was a supporting character in The Scribe of Irohila.

In The Scribe of Irohila the main character, Raoli, left his village, Irohila, to travel to a large walled city, Halekalo. That’s where he met Maralin.

This time Maralin’s got her own story, and Raoli is not in the second novel at all. Don’t worry,however, he’ll be back in the third novel, The Legend of Kaopa.

The Seagull Rebellion takes place in and near Valeka, a large city on the coast near a huge inland bay.

My inspiration for the area of Valeka was the San Francisco Bay Area, where I was born and raised. Valeka is in the area we now know as San Francisco.

The stories in the Antediluvian Adventures are of teenagers living in an extremely ancient civilization – a time so long ago that all historical records have been lost to humankind by the year we now live in. Because this was so long ago all traces of the Valekan civilization were destroyed and removed before the Ohlone Native Americans arrived to populate that peninsula, prior to the founding of Yerba Buena and then, San Francisco.

Raoli and Maralin trade off as main characters for the four books of the series. If these books do well upon publication, I’d consider writing more books with other teenagers as main characters. I’ve thought about writing more on Tuki’s storyline, for example. He’s Raoli’s long-time best-friend in the village of Irohila.

I wrote The Seagull Rebellion in 2002 and right now in 2013 am reading through it and revising as I go, for the first time. It has been a long time coming, as I spent years learning the art of revision while working on three other books: the already-published River Girl, the soon-to-be-published The Scribe of Irohila, and a shorter chapter book for younger children, Ciara and the Fairies, which won’t be published until I can manage to create at least seventeen awesome illustrations to go with it. I’m lagging on my artwork, sorry to say, and need to paint the cover for The Scribe of Irohila before I can start on the “Ciara” series.

Right now I’m about half-way done with my first revision of The Seagull Rebellion. The more I read, the more excited I get. This is truly a fresh look at Maralin’s adventure as I haven’t read the manuscript in more than ten years! Of course I still remember most of it – it came from my consciousness, after all – and there were some memorable scenes. There are surprises as well, and I’m enjoying the process of going over it.

I should have done these revisions long ago, but let me tell you, the process of novel revision has been very intimidating and frightening… especially at first. I felt very blocked for months at a time. They say great novels are not written so much as they are revised. When I write, it is fun to let my imagination go wild and to create the story. Revision, however, is painstaking work involving many judgements and good grammar skills.

After I’m done with this revision I’ll go over it one more time, reading out loud for rhythm, and then look for more grammar issues to clear up. When that’s done, I’ll submit it to my critique group and hope to get a lot of good suggestions for novel improvement.