Developing Fragments

In the last update regarding my upcoming book Order of the Spirits: Fragments, I talked about finding a developmental editor – someone who would help me better structure one of the stories featured in the book. I also mentioned in that post that I was a bit hesitant about the whole thing, but I’m truly glad now that I went through with it. Courtney, who ended up being the developmental editor on the story, did an amazing job!

  We started working on the edits in April and finished with the process a few weeks ago, and I’m very proud at what we’ve accomplished. After some narrative updates and structural changes, the story we worked on had significantly improved. I’m genuinely excited to share it with the world once this book is out!

  The editing process itself was also fun. For those curious, with most projects it goes something like this:

• The developmental editor goes over the manuscript,
• then the author makes changes based on the editor’s notes and suggestions,
• then the editor goes at it for round two!

  Courtney was willing to go for round three on this one as well, just to tighten everything up, and not only that, but she also did the second phase of editing (line editing) along the way. So, technically, this story is all done! (Well, proofreading is still a good idea, but that’s small beans compared to everything else…)

  Anyway, being an experienced and a professional editor, Courtney easily spotted the issues in the story that I had trouble pinpointing, in addition to drawing my attention to some issues that I was completely blind to. What’s more, her insightful suggestions and comments always proved helpful. After reviewing all her notes, I knew exactly what I had to do to improve this story, and how to go about it. So yeah, developmental editing was fun!

  The reason I didn’t write an update about it as soon as we were done is because I got busy with other things. And this is not an excuse, this is actually a part of this update – the work that kept me busy was mostly related to Fragments. For example, I’ve been practising how to do the interior book design, a.k.a. interior formatting. It's a step which ensures that a book looks good on a technical level. Margins, fonts, page breaks… There’s more to it than one might think, and maybe I’ll talk about it in a separate post, but all of it got me thinking that maybe I should have a couple of illustrations in Order of the Spirits: Fragments. Maybe a map or two, as well…? We’ll see.

  Regardless of that, I have decided to continue working with Courtney on the rest of the book when it comes to the narrative content itself, and she will be my line editor for the remaining five stories featured in Fragments. We’ll start working on that in August, which is a bit of a wait, but it’ll be worth it. I’m more than confident that Courtney is the perfect person for the job (again).

  In the meantime, however, there will be major developments regarding the book cover. As stated, I’ve been busy, and I’ve also spent the past few weeks searching for a cover designer. Spoiler alert: I found one, and we’re officially starting with the cover for Fragments today! Seeing how the subject is deserving of its own post, I’ll save the details for another update, but it’s exciting stuff. Things are happening, gears are in motion, and with each passing day Order of the Spirits: Fragments is a bit closer to being a fully developed and realised book!

  I'm going to leave it at that for now, but stay tuned for future updates (and perhaps consider subscribing to our newsletter if you don't wanna miss a thing).

Cheers!