I just got Betsy Mitchell’s developmental and line edit of the manuscript. Her editing letter starts like this:
“The Imlen Bastard” was a delight! Thanks so much for giving me the opportunity to work on it. It’s very clean; I sprinkled some notes throughout but there’s nothing major to concern you. I can predict, though, that people are going to be looking for more of this story…. I almost growled when I realized there was no more.
One of the great things this means is that I’ll be able to post an excerpt on my Kickstarter page later tonight!
A lot of you have been asking for an excerpt. I wanted to wait until I’d heard back from my editor first, so I knew I’d be able to find a passage that wouldn’t change much before it went to press. Now I know I can give you the opening two or three scenes with just a minor brushing up.
All the minor glitches Betsy spotted in the manuscript would normally take a day or two to fix. Because Kickstarter outreach is my main daily task right now, the fixes will probably take a little longer.
Another wonderful implication of Betsy’s feedback is that the manuscript itself should be ready to go to the book designer as soon as the artwork is ready to go with it.
Before launching this campaign, I made a list of known potential delays, mostly to satisfy my own curiosity. The first of these — I worried that Betsy’s schedule might be too full to take the manuscript before the winter holidays — is crossed off as of today. The next one is my job to rule out.
