One down, two to go

I’ve now completed and returned the page proofs for the mass-market paperback of Principles of Angels. There weren’t many changes: really, given that the text had already been proofread by myself for the trade paperback (and presumably also by a professional proofreader), there shouldn’t have been any, but I suspect stuff will always get through.

I found proofreading the book very hard work – hence it taking so long. It’s always difficult to proofread your own words, but with Principles I’m so familiar with the book that I think I know some bits off by heart! Having said that, I did still come across a couple of small things – character foibles, reminders of who knows what about what – that were useful to bear in mind for Guardians of Paradise.

That’s still the main project, the first draft. I’ve made some headway this week, but I’ve got a couple of big questions I need to resolve before I can go much further: one relates to the way my universe works (specifically FTL travel) and the other is the decision as to exactly how Guardians ends. Given I’m at least three quarters of the way through, I really need to work that out.

Actually, it’s not quite as bad as it sounds; my main issue is how much I should be resolving here and how much I can leave for later. There’s a lot more story to come, but this is the third of three contracted books so it would be unfair not to try to provide a satisfactory resolution to the current story, especially as I’m hoping to return to Epiphany Night and other stories at the other end of my timeline after this one.

While my subconscious gets on with mulling all that over, I’ll be doing the last read-through of the edited ms of Consorts of Heaven, as that’s got to be back with my editor by the end of next week. One slight complication is that there is stuff in that book which relates to my universe mechanics, so I have to be careful not to commit to anything that could cause problems later.

Despite all this I’m still hoping to take Xmas off. Watch this space.

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