Break...

I took some time away from chapter four of APoS-NWFO to do some proofing and editing for a friend of mine, in London. He's thinking of posting some stories, or possibly publishing them, and I said I'd go over them for anything that's glaring in the way of errors or confusion.

The MC's name is John, and he's a 40-ish ex-Army man who did time in Afghanistan with Her Majesty's Forces. He's now in IT and doing well, but his history in that country is beginning to break him apart, personally. He becomes very OCD...and it's fascinating. That's all I'm going to reveal about it.

I'm keeping in mind, grammar is a bit different in British English as opposed to American, meaning I'm going to go delicately, here. There are some spots where sentences are strung together with nothing in the way of punctuation that I'm reworking. And a couple of times I've noted (in red type) where some more detail or explanation might be useful. But I don't want to interfere with his vision or telling of the story.

It's not very long, yet. About 23,000 words. But it intrigues me. I'm hoping he will expand it some more.

I'm not really comfortable with Brendan's emotional reaction to realizing he's cut off from Ireland. His dive into thinking he's free almost immediately after he asks himself how he can live with the thought that he might have been responsible for Joanna's death. It doesn't sit right, so this break is also giving me time to rethink it. Maybe move the I'm free thoughts to later, when he's reading his sister, Mairead's letters to Aunt Mari and seeing how carefully she's letting him know what's going on in his home town.

We'll see how it goes, tomorrow.