I am delighted–and relieved, OH MY GOD relieved–to announce that as of this posting, Draft Six of Lament of the Dove is finally, FINALLY complete.
Final word count on this draft is roughly 110K, which puts me within the range I was asked for in Carina’s R&R. Quite a bit of old content has been taken out. Quite a bit of new content has been put in. And now I am going to step away from this book for a few weeks, before I come back for one last read-through to make sure nothing else is in desperate need of fixing before I re-query it back to Carina Press.
This, O Internets, is where you come in. Several of you out there have expressed previous interest in beta reading for me. If you’re still interested, and you think you’ll be able to read through Lament for me in the next couple of weeks, I need to hear from you ASAP.
What I need is going to be extremely simple. I do not at this point need in-depth proofreading or copyedits, although as always, any obvious errors should be brought to my attention. Mostly I need people to read through it like any other book, sanity-check it, and tell me if it hangs together cohesively. If you’ve read previous drafts of Lament and you’re up for taking another stab at it, you’re more than welcome. If you haven’t read a previous draft and you want to, that’s also awesome.
Either way, contact me if you want in. I will fling you a copy of the manuscript in the file format of your choice. My usual gmail addresses are acceptable contact methods, as are DMs on Twitter or PMs on Facebook. Hell, if you can reach me with smoke signals or carrier pigeons, go for it! Just talk to me!
And talk to me soon. I would like if at all possible to re-submit the book to Carina before I go to Canada at the beginning of March, to get it done and dealt with. Thanks all, as always, for your support!
