Owl Editing: Update #1

May the Fourth be with you all.

My writing brain is tired, so this is now an Owl in the Labyrinth progress report, because I have in fact spent most of the day doing edits on The Owl in the Labyrinth. The number of notes in my proofreading doc that are now highlighted in green is becoming more and more satisfying: for one thing, I’ve fixed all of the actual spelling and grammar mistakes, of which there were fewer than I’d feared. I’m well into the meat of the proper feedback, which is largely fourfold.

First came the Deity Edit. It was pointed out that my characters had been doing a lot more casual blasphemy/‘by the gods’-ing than in the two previous books, which I attribute, in fairness, to the fact that they’re all under a lot more stress in this one. Something to do with sparring with tyrants and evading the monsters of the deep, I don’t know. Anyway, rather than leaving my pantheon/s as generic and faceless as I had before, it was time to add in some actual gods. This isn’t a book that gets heavily into religion on any level, so don’t get too excited if you like a good fantastical creation story or myths and legends, but I’m quite pleased with Vedova, widow-goddess of sailors, to whom they pray that they might actually get back home to their own spouses. (No god would ever create something as deadly and inhospitable as the Boiling Seas, goes the logic: there is no sea-god for them to worship.) A light sprinkling of acknowledged churches and some more specific iconography will do for now – though there are of course many deceased and forgotten pantheons for me to explore in future tales of the Boiling Seas and their history…

I then have some fight scenes to trim and tweak, and some extra hints to drop for one elongated plotline that I’ve resolved at the end of this book – I’ve been setting it up for a while now, but apparently some of my hints have been too subtle, as I mentioned the other week. But the main thing I have to tackle, which I’ve made excellent headway on today, is the ending. Not the drama, not the epic, climactic conclusion (which I’m quite pleased with and is, I’m informed, at least ‘good’), but the part after that. The downtime. The breathing-out after the tension is gone, the breathing-room for everyone to come to terms with what’s just happened. I already had a chunk of that on the end – no way to avoid it with so much to resolve in this trilogy-end – but apparently I need a little more.

And honestly, it’s been lovely to write so far. It’s been whole months since I last properly wrote new Boiling Seas content, and it always feels good to write scenes that allow my characters to relax. It’s relaxing in itself. This book is far too long already, sure, but another thousand words or two either way isn’t really going to change that, and I’d rather have a little too much than leave you, dear readers, unsatisfied.

Still a bit more to go on that front – another scene or two and I think it’ll be good – but I’m happy so far. It’s coming along. Soon it’ll actually be here, which is slightly nerve-wracking. It’s not every day one publishes the end of a trilogy, and I am very bad at marketing. I’m not sure how easy it’ll be to find reviewers who’ll take on a whole three books, not just one…