CONSIDERATIONS WHEN WRITING A TRILOGY and UPDATE ON THE TATTOOED SEER

I MANAGED TO FINISH THE EDIT OF THE TATTOOED SEER THIS WEEK. It involved both substantive and line edits, and I was happy to get the whole thing off to Lorina at Five Rivers one month ahead of schedule. Which means, instead of an October release, we have our fingers crossed for August 1st, providing Jeff Minkevics, who designed the cover for The Tattooed Witch, can also create a cover for The Tattooed Seer in time. I hope so. I'd like to launch the book in Calgary at the When Words Collide convention.

It's been an interesting process, doing the edits. There is great value in having a sharp editor look at your work and make suggestions as to how to make the book better. As writers, we tend to be myopic about our work. It was through Lorina's suggestions that I fleshed out a new character in one of the sub-plots in The Tattooed Seer. I had fleshed him out, or so I thought, but not nearly enough. The important details never made it onto the page. They're there, now.

The other great thing about doing edits for a book that's part of a trilogy, is that it forces you to look for inconsistencies. Because I had already started the research and writing for The Tattooed Rose (the third book in the trilogy) I needed to go back and correct some details in Seer with regards to shipping in the 16th century. I had learned a few things in the meantime. There were other small details I needed to change in terms of the world I had created for all three books. For example, I had to make sure I'd been consistent with the honorifics for the clergy, that I'd accented and used the Spanish terms properly, etc. - all very minor things that were easy to miss, but were also important. The substantive edits also meant I needed to do more research - in particular on opium usage and on the characters found in the Commedia dell'arte. All of these are elements in The Tattooed Seer.

If you haven't read The Tattooed Witch yet, it's been nominated for an Aurora award under Best Novel, English. Over the next several months, you can read it for free if you're a member of the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association, who sponsors the Aurora. If you aren't a member, it's also available on Amazon, Kobo, and through Five Rivers Publishing (see the column on the right for links). Witch is competing with some works by very high-powered and well-known writers, including Guy Gavriel Kay, Robert J. Sawyer, and Julie Czerneda. Chadwick Ginther, who we've also published in On Spec, has his second book up for consideration. It's wonderful to be included in such excellent and stellar company.

- Susan.