For my new book I decided to employ a professional editor to fully copy edit my book. Some things stood out for me:
Firstly, as much as I edit my books, and am very careful about it, I’m only human, and of course there were things I overlooked, one or two mistakes. They happen, but with my new editor’s aid I believe we have ironed out all spelling errors, continuity errors and such. This should make the reading experience much better.
Secondly, I must admit
to being shocked at the amount of words spelt very differently in the US
compared to the UK. I made the mistake of thinking it was only a few
words, and not so important. How wrong was I?!
Other things such as
standing and stood, being said differently, and plurals and singular,
the differences are so many. Clearly editing for a different market are
important. lesson learned.
One thing about doing things so much more professionally is it adds to the time before publication. Thankfully I am at the end of it all now, and my new book should be launched within the next week or so.
The genre is quite a departure for me, dealing with family and emotional issues, which are complex and subtle. Writing something like this can be emotional for the writer too, but I feel if I am experiencing an emotional connection with the events in the novel, and how they effect the characters, then hopefully that will feed through to the readers. Time will tell.
Of course, the work never stops, and my next project is going to be the final part of The Dog Under The Bed. It will be simply subtitled: What Happened Next, and concludes it all.
I have been very pleasantly shocked and surprised at the reaction to the first book, at the time of writing this it has 148 reviews on amazon, and a huge amount of ratings on Goodreads too. Clearly it is a much loved book, and worthy of a good conclusion.
I can say the final chapter will be very loving, full of fun and humour, and a wonderful way to send Arthur off to his new home, with his new family.
Roll on next week, when I begin writing it, I can’t wait!
Email: djcowdall@gmx.co.uk
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https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15502553.D_J_Cowdall