Updates

Back from New Orleans and doing final proofing of Strangers Among Us. The book is very close!

New Orleans: what a location for a story–the jazz scene, the art scene, the bayou, the French heritage…but it was the plantations that were of particular interest to me in researching my pirate novel. The novel is set partly in the Caribbean (and I have been to Aruba and Salvador, Brazil), but not to a plantation or to slave homes. Rounding out the research!

Always nice to see the novel gone to the publisher. Got a lovely reply from the editor, too, saying he received it and asking me to nudge him in a couple of months if I haven’t heard anything. I thought that was so kind! So often, the novel goes out into a void and the protocol seems to be: don’t bug the editor.

Final pass of my novel is going great. Hoped to have it finished today…well, that’s not happening. But I am discovering 2 things: the final pass is proving to be super useful because I AM finding tiny nits (mostly consistency in weather, timeline, etc) to change and am doing my 10% solution, which always makes the text sing; AND–I’m loving it. True, an author should be wary about falling in love with their own work (kill your darlings), but I think it is better than it boring me. If my book bores me, it will certainly bore others. So–not boring! And I’m super happy!

All the scenes I wanted to add, and all the rearranging of scenes has been done, and I am on my final pass of the novel! Yay!