Well, you can now pick up a copy of "Dark Secrets" and follow Brielle to Paris. What she discovers will shock you.
In my last blog entry, I promised to talk about the editing process with a publisher and so I will...
I agonize over my characters - are they believable and interesting; the plot - is it enticing, thrilling and surprising; and the setting - is it fascinating and appealing? At this point, I consider myself a decent writer; we can always become better writers and editors help us to reach the next plateau. Most of the time, my characters, plot and settings are good, but the editors find the inconsistencies that we as the writer, skip right over.
This time, the edits were mostly missing somethings - words or punctuation marks. How did I miss these things I thought. I knew before I submitted the manuscript that I had read and reread the story many many times and yet, these edits eluded me.
So, I started through the manuscript again fixing what had been spotted, While attempting to read every word, I found missing quote and periods.
Because my manuscript had French places and terms in it, these words had to be italicized. So I had questions about which words and places had to be in italics.
As I continued through the edits, I felt that gremlins were at work, inserting, taking things out, changing words... weird. But in the end, after reading and rereading the manuscript till I thought my eyes would fall out, it was ready to go. Whatever errors are now in the book, the "gremlins" did it!!
I'm on to the next Oyster Point Mystery - old loves return. Will Lizz or Mike break up Jamie and Jack? Time will tell.
Keep writing,
Till,
Judi
