My next children’s book.

I have finally done as much editing as I think is healthy. After this I start picking on innocent sentences and rearrange them for no particular reason. Enough is enough. Now they are readable and the spelling checks have done their best. I need to take a copy to Chrissie – a skilled grammar editor to fix up my commas, speech marks, full stops, grammatical ‘no nos’ and my split infinitives of which I am fond.

It has taken a year

of part time fiddling to get the nub of the story expanded and then edited to make sense. My good friend Bethany (https://www.bgrogers.com/) was my beta reader. She checks for clear plot flow, characters that stay in character and keep the same names, plot inconsistencies and so much more.

Her analysis showed I needed a better opening which I added and it improved my story immensely.

She has been my beta reader for all my books and proved her skill beyond doubt. I am so grateful.

With the words knocked into shape

I’m working on the illustrations. I am aiming at an older age bracket seven to ten year olds. I will do illustrations in probably a more old fashioned style of colour plates – only 14 or so and little vignettes in sepia to fill in the gaps.