Book 5 of the Raven of Iskandar series is now in the second editing round. I’ve gotten it back from Yvonne and, thank God, there was a lot less blue on it. In a perfect world, all you would need is one round of editing, but the human brain doesn’t seem to work that way.
After having been through the editing cycle a number of times, I can tell you that you get used to the narrative and skip completely over missing words and bad sentence construction. One technique that proofreaders use is to read each line backwards. That will help spot misspelled words but I doubt that it would do much for storyline and sentence construction.
The book title is finally nailed down (in my own mind) as ‘The New Season’. The ‘Raven’ part is going to be dropped but I’m going to make sure you know that it is book 5 of the series right on the cover. I don’t know how many times I’ve been confused by the sequence of other writers’ series.
The title has been solidified mainly by writing it into the storyline. Here’s that excerpt, which incidentally, was add after the first round of editing.
This excerpt takes place after Iskandar faces Hooloo on the assault map Subrosa on Opening Day. Of course there are a lot of fans watching from the Angwin ‘Tournament Room’ back on Necris. (Caution, some profanity below)
Except from Raven of Iskandar Book 5: ‘The New Season’
“We won! We won!” Raiders were shouting and there were high-fives and hugs all around.
“This may be fucking loud,” said Mason Wendlis as he high-fived Dennis. “But it is fucking worth it.”
“Another one for the board!” yelled Jolo, high-fiving the two of them.
On the far side of the room was the largest marker board Dennis had ever seen. On it were three long rows of names with bright green W’s next to them. There was a line, then another long list of names with green W’s marked ‘Championship’. Then there was a fresh line and beneath it was the name ‘The New Season’. Several Raiders were cheering on one of their own who was marking on the board ‘Hooloo; SubRosa; W’
Raven of Iskandar 