This evening was spent prepping to mail out a few dozen postcards to various mystery book shops around the US and Canada, talking about The Vanishing of Owen Taylor, along with a couple copies of the book to various people and organizations. I'm trying to get reviews...and I may regret it but if you don't let people tell you what they think of your work, you won't know how it's coming across or how it can be improved.
I noticed already that I'm cleaning up some of the roundabout chatter Brendan has in P/S because it doesn't add enough to the story to matter. I'll keep some since he's Irish and they love to natter on, but having fallen into that pattern in OT showed me it's more counterproductive than helpful. Atmosphere and reality are fine...to an extent. But anything the story did not need was lectures from Jake on what it all means.
Oh, he still reveals what things mean to him, but in a more personal way, now. And I gave some of the stories he used to illustrate his thoughts to others, where they made more sense. Like having a lawyer talk about the real reason behind the Salem witch trials in response to comments by Jake. Helped move the story along, nicely.
The hardcover of the book looks really nice. I'm brutally proud of it. I think the only issue is how I don't have uniform numbers of lines of narrative on each page. I couldn't figure out how to do that short of setting up each page unto itself...and that was going over 280 pages. Would've taken forever.
But...I will go seeking a tutorial for it what I finally get to publishing Place of Safety.
I noticed already that I'm cleaning up some of the roundabout chatter Brendan has in P/S because it doesn't add enough to the story to matter. I'll keep some since he's Irish and they love to natter on, but having fallen into that pattern in OT showed me it's more counterproductive than helpful. Atmosphere and reality are fine...to an extent. But anything the story did not need was lectures from Jake on what it all means.
Oh, he still reveals what things mean to him, but in a more personal way, now. And I gave some of the stories he used to illustrate his thoughts to others, where they made more sense. Like having a lawyer talk about the real reason behind the Salem witch trials in response to comments by Jake. Helped move the story along, nicely.
The hardcover of the book looks really nice. I'm brutally proud of it. I think the only issue is how I don't have uniform numbers of lines of narrative on each page. I couldn't figure out how to do that short of setting up each page unto itself...and that was going over 280 pages. Would've taken forever.
But...I will go seeking a tutorial for it what I finally get to publishing Place of Safety.
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