Tinkering

I'm in the last roundup on my manuscript for COLD OATH. The critical question is, "When is it finished?" The story is written, and I've done a read through to make sure that I'm satisfied.

But I have two additional processes that I go through before the book is on sale and available to the public.

First, I have the manuscript reviewed by a line editor. That person goes over it with a fine tooth comb looking for typos, grammar or punctuation errors, or the badly phrased sentence.

Then I give "beta readers" a copy of the book. They read the story from beginning to end and let me know what they think. I truly value the feedback I receive from the beta readers.

As readers, we can devour a book in 6 to 10 hours of reading time, but as writers, the process takes months and the disconnected nature of trying to tell a story sentence by sentence, page by page, is often painfully evident when we go back to the beginning of the story - find that we've used two different names for one character, or that she had brown hair in one scene and a blonde in the next (not due to hair color, but author forgetfulness).

My hope is that at the end of the process, the book will be a "satisfying" read. Of course, not everyone agrees. The last time I went through the beta reader feedback process, one person said, "This is my least favorite book you've written." Two days later, another reader said, "Ray, I think this is your best book." Who was I to believe? The latter, of course. Because Life's a Mystery. :-)