Author Blog Challenge - Day 11

Describe your editing process. Who edited your book? What was your relationship with your editor like? What could each of you have done to improve it? What might you do differently in the future?

I haven't published a book, but I helped my friend Mark O'Bannon author of The Dream Crystal while he was writting his book.

I like to say I was his muse, but really, I was his task master. We met at my favorite coffee shop, he was half way writing his novel and I would go there to read. Mark is very generous with his work and would send it to anyone interested, he was writing a fantasy book focused on the fairy world - not my thing, but I agreed to read it. 

From that day on we had a dynamic, I would get the chapter he just finished, 30 - 35 pages, which I printed after I resized the chapter to single line. A few days later I would come back to the coffee shop with the pages and a ton of notes on them. He had mentioned the critiques on his writing group only focused on grammar and typos, he wanted real feedback and I gave it to him.

There were several things I told him needed clarification, gave him my impressions on the characters, and there was a point when I became completely fed up with the main character, Aisling. To remedy this he added a scene where Aisling had a confrontation with her best friend Genevieve, that put things back on track.

Mark is a regular guy and he was writing in a woman's voice, after the first few chapters I got the impression Genevieve had a lesbian crush on Aisling, but when I mentioned that he was very surprised, it was never his intention. I pointed out several instances where I saw that crush and puzzled Mark asked me "Isn't that what girls do?" Needless to say, I had a lot to teach him about how women interact with each other in real life.

Mark finished his book, did the re-write (which I didn't read) and now the book is published. There is one thing Mark refused to budge on and that was clothing description, Aisling is a fashion designer and he wanted to describe every piece of clothing each character in each scene was wearing, after awhile it was distracting and I kept skipping those parts. Now that the book is published that is the one thing he gets criticized on, but I never said "I told you so".

Now in his second book of the series, Mark will include a story line based on something I said. I was complaining about my dating life and mentioned how I felt I was cursed, since every guy I kissed immediately lost interest in me....he liked that concept and I think Aisling will have that curse....poor girl!