It’s been a while since I put up the e-book version of Watcher on Amazon, and I’m finally getting around to uploading the paperback version having had the cover delivered by my excellent cover designer for the main series.
And no, the prequel covers are not professionally made. If you’ve seen them you’re likely aware that’s the case! I’m uploading a new cover for ‘Last Orders’ as the current one sticks out like a sore thumb and I’ve just tweaked the one for the Repent duology.
Watcher, then.
Now the issue with putting up a paperback is that, well, paperbacks are forever. The ebook files can be updated and so I’m a little more laissez faire about being happy with ‘good enough’. In particular, with Watcher I was up against a deadline and working evenings to get the file up before I lost the ability to set pre-orders – at the same time as we were making our way over to Alaska. That left Watcher in an okay state but one that I was never entirely happy with even as I clicked ‘publish’.
I had settled my stomach with the thought that it might need a quick proofread and so, with a little more time on my hands, that’s what I’ve been up to.
However, whilst proofing the paperback version for upload I’ve ended up locked into a pretty major rewrite.
It’s not chapters added here, or plotlines improved there, but rather every single sentence seems to be due a polish on rereading. So that’s what I’m doing and it is taking ages.
The annoying thing is that Watcher has been subject to the most revisions of any book in the series, and that’s likely the problem. It started off about two and a half years ago as the second series book I started writing at the weekends, with an entirely different plot and a world that was barely mixed let alone baked. Over that time my writing style has changed and it’s gone through about twenty sets of revisions bringing in, and deleting major themes.
The ebook version smoothed this over and I think is fine, subject to some pin-prick typos. But looking at it now… I don’t know. Life may be good, but it could be better…
Now the key question is whether this is strictly necessary or whether this is a mental quirk thing. I’ve got a lot of other things I could be doing on the series (hello back log of 14 other manuscripts plus two more prequels) and in real life. Alaska jobs don’t find themselves and four years in a property is plenty of time to accumulate an amazing smorgasbord of crap that needs to go somewhere (likely a skip). Some of the stuff I’m rewriting isn’t necessarily that bad but… but… but…
I suspect it’s not strictly necessary, but I’m going to do it anyway. Know thyself being the foundation of human wisdom what I know of myself is that if someone’s buying a paperback, then I want the prose to be as good as the cover.
At least. Or nearly.
Back to the grindstone.
Ice Age in Scarlet 