A holiday read for the beach that isn’t going to be ready for the summer – probably. After self-publishing thirty books, those being novels mostly but two books of poetry included, I decided to write for the first time a cosy, clean, romance with absolutely no vampires, witches, succubus, or similar characters.
I’ve reached the end, started a first edit, and a question popped into my head that I hadn’t thought of for a while. Are you a cutter or a filler when editing? Me, I’m a filler. The finished novel is thirty chapters and an epilogue, around sixty thousand words, and I know that as I edit, more and more detail will be added (smells, sounds, touch) and the word count will slowly move towards eighty thousand or so.
Some may say that it isn’t an edit and it's just filling in where needed before an edit proper but I see it as a first edit, an addition of words and those additions can be edited on the second edit. After that second edit the novel will be put to bed for a couple of weeks and edit number three will then take place.
My story is a boy-girl romance that shouldn’t happen but obviously does. She is just out of an abusive relationship and is off men for a while and only made that decision three days ago. He has had a huge number of short-term relationships that always break down because - well, we have to read the novel to find out why.
Working title? Impossible Love. This may or may not change as I edit. The story is about love that would seem from the outside to be impossible (or improbable) but I’m looking for a title that's a bit more arty. Having said that, the Impossible Love title does sum the book up.
Oh, and there is also the small task of making a cover, so I will be studying cosy, clean, romance books for ideas over the next couple of weeks.
Am I getting on with editing and book cover creation? Well No. Amazon have just invited me to(and probably thousands of others) to try a Beta of their new "Book to Audible" programme. I'm in the process of going through every book, choosing a voice, making the audio and advertising it on TwitterX, Instagram and my website. Ah well.