S.L.Luck

September 18, 2020

I’m told I should blog more but it’s hard to do when you’re busy completing a novel. So I’m pulling myself away to update you on my progress and I can tell you that it’s going better than well…I’m almost done. In a few days, a week at most, Redeemer will be complete. My younger self would have sent portions of my work out to get feedback but my older (more mature?) self has waited until this week when I put my newest (yet not quite complete) baby into my Beta readers’ hands. Feedback has rolled in and I believe I’ve scored with this one. It seems I’ve invaded my Readers’ dreams, their lunch breaks, their quiet mornings, their busy evenings with something that demands their attention. Score! I say. Yes! I high-five those inner portions of myself that need occasional reassurance. So…the age old problem I’ve rolled around concerns the editing process. I’m a firm believer that all books NEED an editor but my history with editors thus far has been sub par. For my last book, Popcorn & Politics, I gave an advance deposit of half the required amount to my editor. Things went well for a few weeks. Feedback was consistent. Then the editor seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth. Unfortunately, some sleuthing on the editor’s professional and personal pages leads me to believe that the editor met with irrecoverable illness. Not at all the editor’s fault, but now I’m out money. I tried an editing swap next, where I dropped what I was doing for weeks to edit a fellow author’s book, making hundreds, if not thousands of edits the author accepted. The author was supposed to read my work and send me feedback, too. It’s been seven months now and that author has not only published the book I edited and is presently working on a second book, but has yet to give me one word of helpful advice on my own work. Not a single word. Double whammy, right? So, my dilemma is a serious one of trust. I do have some solid people in my corner but the process has shown me that not everyone is going to meet me half way. Many won’t even leave the starting gates and some, unfortunately, will even retreat. How’s that for a morale booster?

I digress.

My plan is still to serialize Popcorn & Politics for free on this site. I wrote it when I was reading a lot of satire and though I realize satire is not your typical page-turning genre, its experimental what ifs are probably why they should be read in the first place. Implausibility aside, they are fun mediums to make you think and that’s what I hope to accomplish when you first read about Jim Tennant and Canada’s Dream Bank Program.

Stay tuned, Dear Reader, and thanks for being in my corner.