While I continue to toil with Part II of my Book Cover Design Primer, I’m also trying to put out Blueblood, the second in the Marty Singer crime fiction series.
The good news is that the line edits came back from my editor, the inimitable Alison Dasho. The bad news is that I have to go through my manuscript as meticulously as she did and weigh her suggestions, then either make or disregard them (the latter does not happen very often). The impact Alison’s line edits have made are already obvious to me and I’m only a third of the way through.
Since hiring an editor can be such a difficult decision for many indies (from cost to ego and a million other reasons), I thought you all might like to see a portion of the work in progress and decide for yourselves if hiring an editor is worth the investment. I’m giving you an unprecedented peek at my writing at its (almost) most vulnerable; I’m in my literary underwear before you, so to speak.
I’m not sure what would be more informative and striking: reading the finished version* first or the pre-line edit version. I’ll let you decide.
Blueblood – Chapter One, with edits suggested by Alison Dasho
Blueblood – Chapter One, after implementing edits
* “finished” might be misleading. Blueblood has already been through a developmental edit by Alison, but not a copy edit (which typically happens after the line edit to catch typos, errors, inconsistencies). You’re reading something in-between.