Whaaah! I’ve  been day dreaming, fantasising and yearning for this day to come. I’m ready (I think) to submit my baby, I’ve been nurturing for the last 4 months to my publisher. 347 pages ,90,000 odd words and 26 chapters of it to be exact. This afternoon I printed off a copy to do my final read through, before I actually submit but I’d say I’m  99 % ready.

So what have I learned from self editing ? Editing is a dam hard slog, slow and steady wins the race;I’ve literally come home from work done my mama duties, then  sat behind my lap top every evening into the wee hours of the morning, for the last 2 weeks. No change in my routine at all. I also learned that I found editing more of a challenge than writing. You need to put yourself in the shoes of a reader, just because it makes sense to you in your head, and you understand what’s happening would someone else? Is it engaging, interesting and page turning? Is there enough drama and suspense? These were all questions that went through my mind when editing scenes and rewriting.

My word count on my first draft was 93,000 I’m surprised that I only removed 3,000 and wiped out one full scene, other than that it’s pretty in line with what I originally wrote, and my book synopsis I sent over to my publisher  in terms of content and order of events.

It’s a complex job, my first edit was just focused on things like ensuring tense, and view point are correct, facts, dates, and the little things made sense and the story flows. This is important to me as the story is set in 3 locations London, the English coast and France.  My story is also  told first person from the main female character’s voice and 3rd for the male so editing from these different POVs, changing  location and even time zone is quite a challenge.  I’ve learned also, if you read something enough times, you start to read what you want a sentence to say and you may miss things, best to rest your work and come back especially if you’re tired. That said I will read a hard copy of my work before I finally let go of that baby and get ready to unleash it to the world. I am paranoid over typos, it’s a joke.

So with 47 day’s to go until my actual agreed deadline to submit my work to my publisher, I’m well on track to take another week or 2 to do a final hard copy read though to ease my paranoid state,  then hit the send button.

The release month will be September 2016, I plan to do a cover reveal on the blog so stay tuned for that, I’ve handed  a brief over to the publishers  on what I’d like my cover to look like. A blog post is up  on alluring book covers seeking your view yes YOU. You can read all about that here. and interact with me.  As a treat you can download a copy of the first 2 chapters of my book here for free! you lucky, lucky thing you.

Do give me a shout via the contact me page or post up a comment if you do download and enjoy.

Catch you soon.