Lexi Revellian's Blog

When editing escapes into the wild...

 I tend to worry. As a novelist, I have a good imagination, and readily imagine what could go wrong in any given situation. You can imagine I've had lots of scope for that in the past sixteen months. 

I find this bit from Winnie the Pooh encouraging:

“Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were underneath it?"
"Supposing it didn't," said Pooh after careful thought.
Good, huh? But my inner editor, entrenched after editing my ten novels, sticks his hand up. 'Wouldn't it be better like this:
“Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were underneath it?"
After careful thought, Pooh said, "Supposing it didn't?"'It's like knowing about kerning. You'll never pass a poster or sign again without wanting to tweak it.

My tenth novel is published, woop woop!

And here it is - The Last Enforcer, and you can buy it here in ebook or, in a day or two, paperback. For a limited time, the ebook is on sale for the introductory price of 99p and 99c.

Keen-eyed blog readers will notice I have changed the title and the cover since I last posted. I loved the original title, Somewhere Beyond Right and Wrong, but the book changed as I wrote it and that title no longer fitted.

The trees photograph is by Johannes Plenio, and was free on Unsplash. Thank you, Johannes.

I spent hours hunting for a suitable image of a man. Most stock photo sites have very poor search engines. Put in 'handsome tough man' and you will be offered anything but. I know there is some current confusion about gender, but if I type 'man' into the box that's what I'm after, and it's no good offering me photos of women. Or, bizarrely, the moon (that was Jumpstory).

I found this image on iStock in the end. Their system is better, because once you've found a ballpark image you can click on Similar Content and gradually work nearer to what you want.

This is my blurb (subject to change):

A gripping dystopian romance

Cadence struggles to make ends meet in the medieval-style Outer City. While scavenging in the outlands her life is saved by Xavier Drake, an enforcer from the high-tech Inner City. Like all enforcers, he is cold and arrogant. But when she starts working for Inners and they meet again, she begins to think that maybe beneath his unforgiving exterior is a decent person…

Xavier has problems of his own. To expiate his father’s crimes, he was compelled to undergo the brutal training to become an enforcer. Ten years on he discovers the truth about the events that destroyed his family and happy childhood and goes rogue. The City’s rulers decide to eliminate him.

Xavier is drawn to Cade. But can he survive attempts on his life, get revenge, and learn to trust again – without putting her in danger?
The Last Enforcer

All those regular readers of this blog whose lives have n...

All those regular readers of this blog whose lives have not been the same since I stopped writing it will be pleased to hear I am celebrating - on my own, times being what they are. I have reached my personal point of no return i.e. 60,000 words, with the current WIP, my tenth novel. Yay!

It's called Somewhere Beyond Right and Wrong, from the poem by Persian poet Rumi: "Somewhere beyond right and wrong, there is a garden. I will meet you there". This title is subject to change, possibly to The Last Enforcer.

It's not an easy book to describe - I'm going to have a terrible job writing the blurb. My heroine Cadence lives in the Outer City, and gets a job working for the Inners. Outers lead a medieval sort of life, while Inners have a lot of high tech, including nano-assemblers which enable them to make anything they want.

I am very fond of my ruthless and damaged hero, Xavier, an enforcer who is not happy in his work.
"You despise Outers, don't you?"
"I despise everybody."
(I can relate to this, particularly lately.) The book has been great fun to write, and I hope readers will find it fun to read when I publish it in the near future.

If you want me to let you know when it's released sign up here - I will only ever email you on those rare occasions when I have a new book out.

R.I.P. Kindle Scout

Goodbye, Kindle Scout, it was fun.

Back in February Kindle Scout stopped selecting books. The weeks passed, and speculation grew. No books chosen for four weeks, five, six... then the announcement appeared on the site.

With hindsight, the signs have been there since the end of summer 2017, after the Kindle Scout/Press team changed. Megan, who everyone liked, was promoted to Montlake, Amazon's romance imprint. The new team encouraged NaNoWriMo authors to submit their books to Kindle Scout, which struck me as quite odd - they wanted books that had been written in four weeks, only a month afterwards so with minimal revision? Then they offered critiques to the top non-selected books. I didn't understand this. Why spend time and money on books you are not going to publish?

Kindle Press will continue, but the new team do things their own way:
They have announced that Kindle Press is no longer interested in sequels, just the first book in a series or a standalone.Though some books still get good promotions such as Bookbubs, this seems to happen less frequently. Instead books are getting price drops without accompanying promotion.Kindle Press will no longer update the back matter to include links to later books in a series, even though when a reader has finished Book 1, that is the very point at which she needs a link to Book 2. And of course, new authors won't be offered contracts through Kindle Scout.So what happens now to Kindle Press authors? I love Kindle Press. I've sold over 10,000 copies of my first two Time Rats novels because they were KP books. I wear my KP tee shirt with pride. But nothing lasts forever, and everything changes.

Future Warrior is out!

I've just clicked Publish on KDP, and the third in my Time Rats trilogy is out in the world, blinking in the sudden light and hoping someone will buy it. For the first week the price is a bit lower than it will be, at £1.99/$2.99.

In Future Warrior (Time Rats Book 3) readers meet Quinn's son Cato, who is a student at Cambridge and not surprisingly has a difficult relationship with his father. (You would too, if your father was Ansel Quinn.) Liam Roth has a main role in this book, and I particularly enjoyed writing his scenes. In this new version of 2135 he is not rich and successful, but scrapes a living as a barista with a part-time market stall selling old books. He is determined to escape his poverty whatever it takes. And of course, in this timeline he has not met Floss, and has no idea why Angel is somewhat reserved with him.

Having finally got over Kayla, Jace is trying to meet someone new, and goes on a series of disastrous dates. Angel doesn't understand why he doesn't just ask Floss out...

I've formatted the paperback with Createspace, and am currently waiting for the proof to arrive. It'll be available very soon. I've made it so that anyone buying one of my paperbacks will be able to get the ebook free.

I'm raising a virtual glass of champagne to the success of my latest novel.  Cheers!

Russian assassins, real and fictional

Five years ago I wrote Wolf by the Ears , a novel involving a Russian oligarch. The spark for the story came from the death of Boris Berezovsky, which struck me as decidedly fishy and unlikely to be suicide, which was the official verdict. The Oscar Pistorius case happened about the same time, and it was striking how every last detail of that murder was reported, while we were given almost no information at all about Boris Berezovsky.

My conclusion was that the Kremlin had picked their moment to get rid of an enemy who was working against them. Berezovsky had just lost a hugely expensive lawsuit against Abramovich, a buddy of Putin's, and faced financial ruin. (You can read a long article about their feud here.) Badri Patarkatsishvili, who was present at a key meeting between the two men and was to have testified in support of Berezovsky, had died in 2008, allegedly of a heart attack. That left Judge Gloster, with no concrete evidence, to decide which of the men was lying about a verbal agreement. She decided in favour of the more personable candidate, Abramovich. Berezovsky trusted our legal system and our police because they are not corrupt like Russia's, and both let him down.

I did a lot of research into other mysterious deaths of Russian nationals on British soil, which turned out to be both fascinating and worrying. The FSB is known to research methods of killing undetectably, and Putin passed a law in 2006 making it legal to kill Russian traitors on foreign soil. It seemed to me that our government was turning a blind eye in order not to get on bad terms with Russia. The Kremlin knew this and took advantage of it. I cringed at photos of David Cameron cosying up to Putin. 

For more details of possible assassinations, see this Buzzfeed article. Our government's timidity bears some responsibility for the recent attack in Salisbury.

I seem to be writing about politics, something I generally avoid. What I really want to do is sell books. So if you haven't read Wolf by the Ears, why not take a look? It's a good read, and topical.

TIME RATS 3 is on Kindle Scout

It's that all too rare occasion when I have completed a new book. Hurrah! This one is Future Warrior, (Time Rats Book 3).

Normally I post when I reach the magic 60,000 word count, my personal point of no return; but perhaps with this novel being the last in a trilogy, I found the final few chapters hard to write so went a bit quiet. I had a particular struggle with the villain's come-uppance, and I'd tell you about it except it would be a terrible spoiler. You'll probably understand why when you read it. Here's the ebook cover:



In this book the timeline has switched and Liam Roth, instead of being the rich and successful owner of a vast internet gambling empire, is struggling to make ends meet working as a barista and living in a grotty high-rise. And you get to meet Quinn's son, Cato, in 2063.

As with the first two Time Rats novels, I've put it on Kindle Scout for a thirty day campaign to see whether Kindle Press wants to publish it. If they do, and you've nominated it, you will get a free copy of the ebook when it comes out. To nominate TR3, go here.

If it's not selected I'll self-publish it immediately, and have an introductory price of 99p for a few days. Sign up for my mailing list and I'll let you know. (I should say my mailing list is only ever used to tell fans I have a new book out.)

Hunting down repeated words in the WIP

I've blogged about word echoes before. They used to be a particular problem for me, one I like to think I've now mostly got the better of. But when I've nearly finished writing a book, as well as reading it aloud, I put the text chapter by chapter through editing software to catch repeated words.

Initially I used Autocrit, then it got expensive. I switched to ProWritingAid, which was free, but you now have to pay if you want to analyse more than 500 words. I don't object to paying for a service, and it's easy to scout around and find 25% off vouchers, but ProWritingAid offers a wealth of features I wouldn't use. I don't need help with my grammar, style or readability. Their idea of a 'sticky' sentence is not mine. I just want to find repeated words...

The answer is Repetition Detector.  It's simple and does one job really well, highlighting repeated words in two categories, close and distant repetitions, and you choose the definition of close and distant. You can tell it to skip words like he, she, it etc.. It's free for 30 days, then an incredibly bargain $7.40 for life.

Anthology with Time Rats short story

Kindle Press authors have banded together to produce a book of short stories called Summer Solstice , and I'm part of it.

My story is a Time Rats one; it's about what happens when Floss and Jace go back in time to buy half a dozen paintings from Van Gogh for a rich art collector, and then their client gets slightly out of hand...

For the bargain price of 99p, you can read stories in different genres from twenty-five writers (all of whom Amazon thought worth publishing) and maybe discover new favourite authors.

Thanks to fellow KP author Lincoln Cole, who put the book together.

On tweaking the WIP

I am an inveterate tweaker. I'm currently halfway through Time Rats Book 3. Before starting to write, I reread what I wrote the day before and improve it, adding bits, and altering words and their order. I believe in Holly Lisle's advice that you should never read your work without a pen in your hand. I also at some stage read the whole thing aloud, and put it through editing software (mainly to catch word echoes). By the time my books are published, I've had all my second thoughts, and third, fourth and fifth ones too.

I think writers who press on to the end of their first draft before editing in one go miss out - though they undoubtedly get more books written.

According to Ben Jonson, Shakespeare was not a tweaker:

“I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, “Would he had blotted a thousand,” which they thought a malevolent speech. ... His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too. Many times he fell into those things, could not escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to him: Cæsar, thou dost me wrong. He replied: Cæsar did never wrong but with just cause; and such like, which were ridiculous.”

I think any writer will recognize what we have here; a less successful author carping at a more successful author, complicated by their being friends. I'm also not totally convinced of the truth of his assertion - but alas, we will never know now how Shakespeare wrote. While Googling this, I came across an irresistible anecdote from John Manningham's diary about Shakespeare that I'd forgotten. Here it is - I've modernised the spelling:

“Upon a time when Burbidge played Richard III, there was a citizen grown so far in liking with him, that before she went from the play she appointed him to come that night unto her by the name of Richard the Third. Shakespeare overhearing their conclusion went before, was entertained and at his game ere Burbidge came. Then message being brought that Richard the Third was at the door, Shakespeare caused return to be made that William the Conqueror was before Richard the Third. Shakespeare’s name William.”