Dragons Ho!!!

Last night I submitted the final final final (yeah, the last of 'em) revisions for Desperate Knight.

This mainly consisted of eliminating extraneous dialogue tags (think "things other than said or asked"), and using body language or similar methods to show mood. It also consisted of eliminating my tendency to overuse adverbs. Which I freely admit to doing. That's why it's so very important to work with a good editor, of which mine, Nikki Andrews, is top-notch.

The final thing I needed to work on was to revisit the word "look". Another one of my overused word, in this case to the tune of 284 instances in 91,000 words. Which overall is a pretty small percentage (0.0031), to be exact), but it still shows up a lot. Especially when I found it appearing several times in close proximity. Again, this is why you need a good editor.

No, this isn't the fun part of writing--coming up with story ideas, and figuring out how to put them into a coherent tale that will hold a readers attention and keep them turning pages. It's not the fun part of crafting witty, bantering dialogue, or fast-paced action scenes, or dealing with persnickety dragons. This is the nitty gritty, WORK part of getting a book done. The slogging through, rereading, trying to catch all the little things that are so important to fix.

All of which just goes to show what goes into bringing you a product--in this case a book--that's as good as we can make it. I say we because this is absolutely a team effort. Yes, the book is my idea and execution, my baby. But the team which then helps me polish it is what gives you not only a good story to read, but also a work that's been edited multiple times by several people in order to eliminate all the things that might distract you and pull you out of that story. I'm proud to work with the folks at Champagne Books, because they are so focused on putting out a top-quality product. It means a lot of work for the authors as their books go through those multiple rounds of edits, but in the end it's totally worth it when we see that finished product.

That all being said, Desperate Knight is on track for an early August release, in both ebook and paperback editions. I am over-the-moon excited to bring you this new chapter in the adventures of Morgan and Marissa. I hope you'll love it as much as I do.