Meredith Mansfield, Author

Revision is an iterative process–even when I consider it one pass.

The first pass at the final revisions for BEYOND THE PROPHECY is complete. Way ahead of schedule. (I’d projected the end of July, not the middle.)

What that means is that I’ve been through all the critiques I’ve received (one is still out), marked up revision notes, been through the entire manuscript, and dealt with most of those notes one way or another. Some scenes were cut. Some new ones written or existing ones expanded. And in several places a little more was added to refresh readers’ memories about how this world and the magic works. Overall, the manuscript got longer, not shorter. (Some of that may get smoothed out in the next step and the polishing edit.)

I left a few notes (fourteen of them to be exact) that I want to come back to. Some of these are scenes I may still delete, but hadn’t decided on in the first pass. One pair of scenes, in particular, just doesn’t do enough to justify their existence currently. The decision I have to make is whether to cut them, or expand them. And the dreaded middle still needs some attention to focus it more tightly on the main problem of the story. (Difficult, because part of that is set up for the conflict in the fourth and final book of the series.)

So, now, I’ll go back specifically to those notes and make those changes–or not. Some of these changes may take a bit longer than most of those in the first pass.

And then I’ll be ready to set the publication date for September and put the book up for pre-order while I work through the final polishing edit.