The End of The Edits

The galleys for DEATH SCENE are finally done, and I am rejoicing.

For the uninitiated, galleys are the final proof of a novel before it gets published. For my e-books, the galleys arrive in the form of a PDF file. This is the last chance I have to make edits, so I have to read them carefully, and make notes of any changes in a separate word document, to be submitted back to the editor.

The pesky day job has been seriously hampering my writing time the last couple of weeks (and before that was my holiday...) so I was not able to devote as much time to my galleys as I would prefer. Still, I managed to read them twice. I found a few things that looked wrong, I made notes, and I despatched them back to the editor.

Submitting the galleys marked the end of the emotional roller-coaster ride that was the editing process. At the beginning of this process, I was excited that my book was going to have a place in the world. By the third or fourth round of edits, I was sick to death of the story and convinced it was a load of rubbish and I had no business calling myself a writer.

When I got to the galleys, that changed. As I read through them, my faith in my story was re-confirmed. It wasn't a bad book after all, I thought. In fact, by the end of the editing process I was rather proud of what I'd achieved, and had rediscovered a belief in myself as a writer.

My involvement in the editing process is now over. My actress amateur sleuth, Shara Summers, is waiting in the wings for her big entrance into the world. I can't help but feel a little nervous on her behalf. Will she get a standing ovation, or get booed off the stage? I guess only time will tell.