After struggling with Crisis of Conscience, the next Flight of the Kestrel novel, I can at last announce that the end is in sight. The manuscript is with my beta readers and the new cover is having final tweaks. The front cover is done, the designer is working on the print version. Watch this space.
A published author who spoke to the Swansea and District Writers Circle a few months ago (via Zoom of course) said that it is usual in a series for subsequent books to get longer, and this really worried me. My novels are getting shorter. In fact, the first draft of Crisis of Conscience was only 30 thousand words long and couldn’t be even called a novel. But I believed in the story and that it had potential.
My friend Elizabeth Pratt read it for me and produced a whole report on where it fell down and what else could be done with it. I rewrote. My friend Gail Williams professionally edited it for me and tore it apart (nicely). I rewrote. I sweated over it for weeks and finally came up with more content for the plot and more depth for the characters. I believe it is all the better for it. It’s now almost double the size and the Kestrel crew get in double the trouble.
I have had two beta reader’s reports so far and the comments are mostly positive. One, who has read the first two books, said each book is better than the last, which is a huge encouragement.
Ann Marie Thomas is the author of four medieval history books, a surprisingly cheerful poetry collection about her 2010 stroke, and the science fiction series Flight of the Kestrel. Book one, Intruders, and book two Alien Secrets, are out now. Follow her at http://eepurl.com/bbOsyz