THE FINAL EDIT - well almost

THE FINAL EDIT

- well almost 

A few weeks ago I wrote about finishing the fourth in my series of  DI Sonny Russell novels, Blood on the Cards. https://chrisodonoghue.blogspot.com/2019/10/journeys-end-well-not-quite.html Well, despite my silence on the project, I haven't been idle since then.

First, I reread the manuscript on the laptop on which I wrote it - carefully, or so I thought. Then, I printed the whole thing out for my better half and expert editor to go through with a fine-tooth comb. She much prefers to work on paper, having been brought up in the old school of thorough journalism, where gaffes are easier to spot on the printed page. (It's amazing how many sheets of A4 paper are needed to produce a 77 thousand word book when double-spaced.) Anyway, she diligently worked through it, chapter by chapter, annotating the pages with handwritten notes and suggestions. Day after day she supplied me with a surprising number of corrections to work through. Then it was my job to go back over the whole thing. In the main, it was a question of inserting missing speech marks and other omitted punctuation, but other suggestions needed a little more thought. Some of her ideas, though perfectly correct, were to do with a matter of style. This was more or less subjective, and as the author, I have the final say and in some cases I decided to leave what I had written, as it was.

Now you would think that was it, but I didn't like the idea that, between us, we still might have missed something. (I read crime novels, back to back, not just for leisure, but also for education and as a critic. I'm always on the lookout for mistakes and I've often found errors in the books of some of the best known authors.) So back to the laptop for a very slow, thorough read. I'm glad I did as I found a few - a very few, I'm glad to say - minor mistakes we'd missed.  

The End? Well not quite. Greer has suggested that the final denouement needs working on to make it more dramatic, so we'll have to sit down and do that. Also, this book is a little different. I have included inserts in different type faces and, on talking to Eddie, who will do the layout and make sure the book looks right, I know I will have to make decisions on where these inserts are placed. And then there's the small matter (!) of the cover design. However I am ever hopeful that I will be ready to publish early in the near year, so watch this space...