Déjà View Is Getting Revamped for the Second and Final Time

My debut novel Danger Peak received three editions, so I suppose I owe the same to my follow-up. Déjà View has recently undergone a remodel—the second and last time this will be happening. I know I said I probably wouldn’t revise the book again, but a few things happened. It won First Place in the category of Young Adult – Literary and Coming of Age in The Spring 2024 BookFest Awards, and since I already placed the BookFest award seal on the cover of Danger Peak, when it only won Second Place in its category of Young Adult – Action and Adventure, I felt it was only fair that the cover of my second novel should also be graced with the award seal. Also, I reread the book for the millionth time and was surprised that there were still a few errors. The most glaring (to me, anyway) was in one chapter, I used the pronoun “I” instead of “Bobby.” Oops! Talk about a Freudian slip!

I also cleaned up the “Praise for Déjà View” section that opens the book. Some of those reviews were fairly lengthy, so I chopped them down. I also added a new review from The US Review of Books, which served as the final professional review of Déjà View.

Finally, there were a few instances where I wanted to clean up the language a bit—not because it was vulgar (if the book was a movie, it would only be rated “PG-13,” after all) but just to make certain sentences more succinct, e.g., when Miss M. accidentally gets her eye poked by Joe in the cafeteria, her hand no longer “clings to it”; she “shields it.”

Although I already deleted a chapter to “get to the good stuff” in the book sooner, I was also toying with deleting yet another chapter early in the book (try to guess which one!), but in the end, I decided to keep it for several reasons: 1) I just really like the chapter, and 2) events in the chapter get referenced later on in the “crazy part” of the book, which is one of the reasons why the chapter made the cut in the first place. I suppose my original instinct was correct.

Currently, the most recent version of Déjà View is only available via paperback on Amazon. The eBook will be available in a week or so, and Barnes & Noble will acquire it a little after that, if history is any guide. If you click on “Read sample” below the cover on the Amazon page, you’ll see the new cover with the award seal, as well as a short sample of the changes that were made so far, including deleting the apostrophe in “Publisher’s Weekly” on the first page. Again: Oops!

So what are you waiting for? Click the button below for the latest and greatest (and final) edition of Déjà View!

Third Edition of Déjà View

Full disclosure: If you already own a copy, do the new revisions warrant acquiring another one? Yes! J/k. Not really. But if you still haven’t picked up a copy, there’s no better time than the present.

MTP

P.S.: Next week’s blog (a supersized one!): The Top 5 Best Episodes of The Wonder Years

P.P.S.: Déjà View is now available on Amazon (the newest version!) and Barnes & Noble:

AmazonBarnes & Noble