I’ve spent the last two nights miserable at my desk here in the office with the fever, which is why this post is two nights late. I think that’s a valid reason for delay, and anybody who doesn’t… well nobody is reading this now anyway, so it doesn’t matter.

Lots of feedback for Penumbra has come in, most of it very, very positive, which is fantastic. There are some aspects at the beginning that need to be fixed, I was already mostly aware of them, but for the most part everybody feels the story flows pretty well from there. I’m very pleased! But I’ve still got quite a bit of work to do. Chapter 1 needs a complete rewrite, and chapters 3/4 need pretty heavy revisions. For the moment, I’m doing a deep polish of everything else though and I’ll get back to those areas either when I’m done with polish or when inspiration hits.

I’ve been reading a book called The Devil You Know recently, its the first book in the Felix Castor series. It’s not bad, probably my favorite UF series I’ve read… maybe every, but the author (Mike Carey) has a very peculiar style that keeps catching me off guard. How to describe it… It’s like he ignores the old adage, “Show, don’t tell” and instead follows the mantra of, “Show/tell EVERYTHING through metaphor or simile.” Probably the fact that I’m so bad at writing metaphors is the reason it stands out to me so much.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been using ProWritingAid (www.prowritingaid.com) for my edits and it’s been just wonderful. I can’t recommend it enough, particularly the tool that lets you find phrases that repeat in your text. It’s not an all inclusive answer to editing, but definitely check it out if you aren’t familiar with it.