Meredith Mansfield, Author

I’ve finished the revisions on THE VOICE OF PROPHECY and done the formatting for Kindle and Print. I’ve even uploaded and ordered the proof of the print version. (That’ll take a couple of weeks to come.)

Now, that doesn’t mean it’s finished. It’s not. There are several things still to do. It just means that I think it’s close enough that what I do from here on won’t disturb the formatting too much. Also, this will allow me to get the Kindle version up for pre-order in the next couple of days and still make those final changes before it’s actually available.

The major revisions are done, but I still need to do the polishing edit. This is where I go through and try to catch any last minute typos. I may–in fact I plan to–alter some of the dialog beats (little actions that accompany dialog to let the reader know who’s talking). Less facial expressions and more interaction with their environment to ground the dialog will be the goal there. But that’s just changing two or three words for maybe three or four other words. Not something that should alter the formatting. And I’ll be looking for places where I’ve said the same thing twice or said things in too-similar ways. These things can creep in during revisions and need to be killed.

Unfortunately, I need to leave a little time, a week or so, before I start that. Otherwise, I won’t really see the things I need to because I’ll still be too close to it.

Meanwhile, there are a few changes I need to make to the first chapters of BEYOND THE PROPHECY, which will be included at the end as an excerpt. I may spend some time trying to create a professional-looking map to include, too. That’s a potential problem, though. The map wouldn’t affect the formatting of the kindle version, but it could mess up the formatting of the print version. Unless I do something non-standard and put the map at the back. Hmm. Well, we’ll see.

Either way–with or without a map–THE VOICE OF PROPHECY will go live on December 15th.