All things considered, pandemics mainly, that was an awesome Easter weekend for me. I hope yours was too. Some riverside walks, as well as back garden sunbathing and beers, in April, in Scotland. Insanity!
As if this wasn't good enough, my WIP,
Chrysalis made some major strides forward and I have essentially been locked in
conversation with one of my beta readers, who has now finished the story,
thinks it's very good and pointed out the couple of plot holes that are
resolved in my mind, but not on paper.
It all went very well. I said that I’d hoped
the draft was a gripping political thriller with Black Mirror elements to it.
And that I didn't want it just to be a good read, I wanted it to haunt the
reader afterwards, and stimulate conversations about some of the themes. I'd
have been happy hitting one of those ambitious goals I set myself. She says
I've nailed all of them.
She says she normally beta reads a chapter at
a time meticulously, but she gave up after 8 chapters because she
"couldn't put it down and just wanted to know what happened." An
enormous compliment that has had a smile on my face all weekend. She then, once
she knew how the story panned out, went back and did all the fiddly analysis.
Her main criticism was the ending which I'd
left too ambiguous so I've wrote another chapter to go at the end as well as
changing all the little typos that spell check doesn't find as they are
actually words, just not the one I intended.
Now, it's time to get stuck into my guide to self-publishing and see what's going to be up next. I'll need to figure out editors, and querying, and front covers, and who knows what other treats await me. As always, any advice from anyone who has been there, done that, got the t-shirt would be warmly welcomed. It's quite fun being on this journey from having no experience whatsoever.
I'm away to enjoy this high while it lasts,
and catch up with Line of Duty and The Circle.
Harrison
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