My wonderful beta reader finished reading Saint Valentine's Fancy (title may be changed) before the new year, and yet I've only really started rewrites now. I just had other things I wanted to do more.
Like working on getting the first book published and promoting it.
So I'm finally getting around to it. I just rewrote a chapter that was practically possessed. She just couldn't get through it, and kept having to search for the words to tell me something was wrong with the chapter.
She did admirably well. After much contemplation, she managed to put her finger on what was bothering her, and things she thought would help change it. Since I knew there were parts of the book that were wrong, I was immensely grateful.
I've been toying with this manuscript for probably a year now, and I've been dragging my feet on it, because there was just the unease about the whole thing. I knew something was wrong, but not the exacts. No matter how many times I reread it, I couldn't find where the problems were lurking. It was almost enough to make me want to scrap the whole manuscript and jump to doing the second draft of the third book.
So, I owe her SO much. Probably more for this one than for the first book. Though I rewrote about a third of it after her attentions.
And I'm now happily working along on the second book. Have some more tensions to add as Keila struggles with her heart sneaking off and falling in love on her.
And no, seriously, that's not a spoiler. I'm a romance writer; I obviously believe in happy endings. So if you couldn't guess that my protagonists fall for each other, you just don't know me very well.
They're just not necessarily going to enjoy getting to the "ever-after" part of the happily.
