Edits (round 1) are off to my Agent!

Hey y’all!

It’s been awhile since I updated, but that’s because I’ve been KNEE DEEP IN ALL THE EDITS! Trish (my agent) had done an initial read through (after the one where she read it and wanted to represent me) and she had a lot of great feedback. I’ve mentioned this before in another post, but there was a LOT of work to do.

Work that resulted in a ton of changes. some of it was adverb slaying (I really don’t want to make that mistake again lol). But a lot involved really looking at some core pieces that I hadn’t spent enough time on. One of which is describing my characters more. I tended to paint character description with a broad brush and try to bring their character out in dialogue and mannerisms. But it was really fun to sit myself down and say, “OK Al, write down what you see in your head when Dave Kowalski, the Baron of Barbeque, walks on the scene.” And then actually doing that.

I also tended to lean on Mac’s (the main character) introspection and inner voice in situations a bit too much. Which resulted in some repetitive thoughts intruding on the page. Sure, he probably IS thinking these things, but he doesn’t need to bore the reader with it for the fourth time 🙂

All this to say, I purposely went into editing with a very open mind, and the attitude that I wasn’t going to hold anything “too precious to be changed.” Taking that attitude allowed me to take a chainsaw to the book where it was needed, to patch things up in a way that made it stronger, and I think A Cook’s Guide to Supernatural Philadelphia is better now than it ever was!

Adverbs are the devil when left unchecked 😉