This month I began work on the second edit of the fourth book in The Cache Iron mystery series called Charged Iron. The story tells about the mysterious death of billionaire Benjamin Bradford and the family that wants to keep their secrets and find the truth...maybe.
At the end of the month, I currently find myself in the middle of Chapter 8. The book has 21 chapters, so I am 38% the way through the manuscript. This part of the edit requires me to go back through the first edit of the manuscript, which was a paper edit and key in all the changes that I made, including additional passages scribbled in the margins. Even now, as I read my original thoughts, I am making changes and introducing new ideas into the chapters. The editing phase for me is about cleaning up the story and tightening up the loose ends, so it becomes an enjoyable adventure for all of my readers.
Over the course of three novels, I have found the right tools to make the job easier. I have my main computer, a Mac Laptop hooked up to a main monitor to key in all my changes. I have a portable monitor hooked up to my right where I keep a copy of my plotting files in Plottr open, which I constantly refer to, to ensure the story stays consistent with what I have said in previous books. To my left I have a copy stand where the manuscript sits and I can go through each change, sentence by sentence, so nothing is missed. I have a small timer that sits off to the side, near my coffee that runs on twenty-minute intervals. I edit for twenty minutes and then get up and stretch my legs for ten. Then another twenty minutes and then a ten-minute break and I keep to this routine through the time of my day that I have proportioned to work on editing the book.
I hope that this round of edits will be done by the end of November. The next round of edits done by the end of December and we may get this manuscript over to my editor in February with the aim of a spring release.
Stay tuned for next month's update.
Alex