This week I am mostly…juggling

This week I’ve reached a point where three books have collided, and I’m having to take a crash course in literary juggling.

The typeset PDF of Book One was sent to me on Monday for final proofreading – obviously Headline have an extremely talented proofreader who is on the case, but I’m a controlling monster and wanted to give it a once-over myself. I discovered that reading your first novel after several months is a VERY BAD IDEA, because there are things I would change with hindsight and now it’s too late. This is an important lesson that I will almost certainly repeat because I’m a glutton for punishment and not very good at letting things go.

Meanwhile Book Two is undergoing its final edit, which mostly involves me endlessly tinkering with it because I can’t let that go either. My deadline isn’t for another couple of weeks, but I’m determined just to send the bloody thing to my editor by Monday on the basis that mindless faffing isn’t going to make her love it any more or less.

Finally, I’m four or five chapters into Book Three, and currently feeling tentatively happy that it’s the right book for me to write next, rather than destined for the Abandoned Drafts pile. It’s early days, watch this space.