Friends who used to regularly ask me how the book is coming along have stopped doing that. I can't blame them and it's partly a relief. Progress is often invisible to the naked eye, it feels ridiculous to report on. I'm glad I didn't know at the start how long this would take. But progress I do, I swear.
As I said, I'm pursuing another comprehensive edit of the book. I've done a trial edit, which I was very happy with, and had a wonderful conversation with the editor. So far, I'm very impressed with the process. She won't be able to start till early June, and so I'll take a little time to go through it again (SO boring, I'm sick and tired of the sound of my own voice) and hand it in by the end of the month.
This feels absolutely like the best next step and I'm excited to see what this will be. It's a little sobering. I sort of thought that you were a good writer if you wrote something down and it was good. And the idea that someone else (or several someones) needs to help push it over the finish line is a little humbling. But it is the reality. Actors need directors too. I'm too close to see it clearly, and a fresh eye is so helpful.
This is not coming cheap, of course, and I'm breathing through the sticker shock. But I see it as an investment -- one hopes that a better book will sell more. And this will definitely make this a better book.
She's also going to help me tackle the order of the pieces, which has been such an insurmountable problem for me. So all in all, I feel like this is a huge next step, which will basically get this baby birthed. I'm very excited.
Mind you, there will need to be subsequent rounds of copyediting and proofreading and beta reads, etc. So this isn't going to happen soon, but it will happen. While she works, I will try to get the cover design process off the ground and learn more about the process of making the book available on all the different platforms. A lot still to be done, but onward we go.