THE DEMI-MONDE: SPRING

I got the final edit of 'The Demi-Monde: Spring' from Jo Fletcher ten days ago and have been working flat out ever since knocking it into shape. Jo made some interesting observations which necessitated me doing some quite major tinkering - with a book of 150,000 words even a small change ripples through the book and care is needed to ensure consistency. She also wanted a recap of Winter at the start of the book so that had to be written and she thought that one of the new characters deserved a little more page-time. The upshot was a lot of bloody hard work.

I can though give you a sneak-peek at a bit of artwork that'll make its debut in Summer. Again this is curtesy of Nigel Robinson.

Unfortunately all this extra stuff had an inflationary effect: the book ballooned to 156K and as I'm determined it shouldn't go over 150K this required surgery. I ended up dumping one of the chapters, which had the unfortunate effect of reducing Casanova to something of a bit-player, but that's life ... or editing for you.

So, it's off to Merlin the copy-editor now which, hopefully, will be relatively painless, while I turn my attention back to Fall!