Working weekend.

I have compiled the follow-up to Jessica's Trap into one big file for editing. Once that's done, I'll pass it around a few folk to look for those errors that are so blatant I just can't see them (they are always there). Ideally, I'll look for some who have read Jessica's Trap and some who haven't. Aside from errors I'll need to know two things. One, does the story stand alone - ie can you read it and make sense of it if you haven't read the earlier book (well, two books, one of which is not available yet)? Two, do the details match with Jessica's Trap?

This is an especially sensitive subject after watching the Phantasm films where the continuity between films is painfully contrived and often ridiculous. Funnily enough, the opening narration of Wishmaster was by Angus Scrimm, the Tall Man, and the pharmacy guy in this film was the ice-cream seller from Phantasm. At least that goggle-eyed kid wasn't in it.

I wrote this second book first. Jessica's Trap started as simply backstory, but it took on a life of its own.

This weekend will be intensive editing because I really want this one finished. I want to work on 'Ghosthunters', the only book with 'ghost' in the title and probably the only one with nothing supernatural in it. That one I think I'll self-publish under a different pseudonym (Perhaps Tony Steel = toe-knee-steel for the slower ones out there) since it's a considerable departure from the 'career' stuff. It won't get as far self-published but it means I can at least make it cheap for the electronic versions. Plus there won't be any publisher saying 'ooo, no, you can't say that'. First though I will need to read this book to make sure I'm not being 'samey'. Oddly, it's cheaper as a paperback than as Kindle on Amazon. I don't think I've ever seen that before.

Ghosthunters will need editing and a few critical eyes too but it's some time away yet.

In the current book, there is a smoker who stops smoking. I wrote the outline before the smoking ban and left him a non-smoker, and also left him pleased about it. That must now change.

There is also someone smoking in what is effectively his place of work, and throwing cigar-butts around. That will not change.

This is a long-winded way of saying I'm taking the weekend off blogging because it's raining here and I can't do anything outside, and I want this manuscript out of my way.

So I should be silent until Monday.

Unless the red mist rises. There are no guarantees.