At last I think – I hope! – the publisher’s edits are finished on TimeSplash. The text is now as good as it can be, considering [...]]]>

Edit, v., to suffer. Contr. of  head hit, from the ancient publishing practice of whacking an author about the head with a contract until he or she submits.

At last I think – I hope! – the publisher’s edits are finished on TimeSplash. The text is now as good as it can be, considering what the mob at Lyrical had to work with. So polished, in fact, that I can see my bruises in it.

I honestly didn’t know editing was going to be so traumatic. I thought it was just a process of spotting a few mistakes, correcting typos, tidying up the prose here and there. Boy was I ever wrong! Everything about the book came under review, from the use of hyphens to the fundamental premises of the whole story! Over the past few months I have had to argue the case for just about every plot decision and character description, every piece of world-building, word-choice and comma. It has been, in a word, tricky. Worst of all were my struggles against “house style” – which was not always good style in my view.

However, it is all over now. The battles are done and the manuscript is, for better or worse, finished – at least to the point where no further issues are outstanding, and no-one has the strength left to raise any more. TimeSplash is moving into production and it’s still on schedule.