I’m still neck-deep in the first draft of Book 5, but I was chatting with my publisher the other day and she asked when she could expect to see Book 2.  She wants to go ahead and get it placed on the calendar for next year.  The publisher has added a couple of new authors in the past few weeks, which means more releases, which means forward planning becomes a must.

And that also means that, today, I started going over The Hidden Throne and doing some edits and revisions.  It’s going to take some time – there were a couple of plot threads that I left dangling in The Invisible Crown that I want to pick up and weave into Book 2 (see how I extended that metaphor?  Yeah, that was good), and just some general clean-up and revision on a book that I haven’t touched in over a year.

I have an uneasy truce with editing.  It’s far from my favorite part of writing, but I recognize its importance.  Sure, I know an editor will look over the manuscript once I pass it along to the publisher, but it’s sorta like those folks who clean their houses before they have a cleaning service come in to clean.  You don’t want the pros thinking you’re a complete slob or crap at this thing, so you do your best to have everything all tidied away and make sure the proverbial underwear isn’t hanging from the metaphorical lampshade when the house cleaners arrive.  It’s sorta like that.  I’m sure there will still be a few missing words here and there, typos and misplaced commas and run-on sentences and things like that.  I’m sure there will be bits that need revision and work when the manuscript gets back to me.  But I still want what I send out to be as polished as possible.  Plus, there’s the new bits I want to work into it before it goes out.

So, the long and short of it is, I’m in editing mode for the next week or two at least.  It’s probably for the best, because I was about to hit a wall in Book 5’s progress, and I need a little time to recharge the ol’ batteries.

Anyway, if you hear a scream of eternal suffering from Northern Virginia, that’s just me editing.