Status of the Handyman Trilogy & The Steps I Go Through to Develop a Book

Hi all. Here’s a progress report on the Handyman Trilogy:

The Handyman’s Tale is out to The Comma Queen for the final round of editing. She started editing on April 1st (no fooling!). I wouldn’t expect to get any initial drafts back for a week or so.

The Handyman’s Curse is ready for printing and then delivery to my Beta Readers. It’s coming in at a whopping 96K. I’ll deliver the copies on Saturday. I wouldn’t expect this to take about a month to read. So, I might get feedback in late May.

The Handyman’s Justice is under construction. I’ve got maybe 10,000 words done. Meaning, it’s got a loooong way to go.

I think I’ve got my process down now. As of today, here are my steps to get a book through the final editing stage (as of today).

1)      Whatever outlining I want to do (this is evolving. I’ll put out a blog at some point about my outlining efforts for the Handyman’s Justice). With the first two books, I was very much a Gardener (a better word to use than Pantser—hate that word).

2)      Write the book.

3)      Bounce chapters off Marje (my beloved wife and author) as I go.

4)      Make changes from step 3.

5)      Send the book through Autocrit (probably multiple times throughout the process, but likely starting at about this point). Autocrit does not rewrite anything, but it makes developmental level recommendations on broad directions and calls out structural failings, so I can consider rewriting.

6)      I sent my first two books through a professional development editor (my daughter, who has served as an Acquisition Editor for a small press and a professional Editor with a hefty client list). She did a great job. I may use Autocrit as a developmental editor at some point.

7)      Make changes from steps 5- 6, respectively.

8)      Send book through my writing group, The Alternate Historians (these folks are really good!)

9)      Make changes from step 8.

10) Send book to Beta Readers.

11) Make changes from step 10.

12) Use Grammarly to clean up misspellings, capitalization, missing words, etc. Never use Grammarly to rewrite my sentences, though!  (I may use this step intermittently before steps 8 &10)

13) Send the book to the Comma Queen for final editing.

14) Make changes recommended by step 13.

So, Book 1, The Handyman’s Tale, is at step 12. Book 2, The Handyman’s Curse, is at step 10. And Book 3, The Handyman’s Justice, is at step 2.

There will be more steps after this (Cover Creation, maybe Audible Version, maybe Net Galley for early reviews, other?). But I’m just starting to get into these. So, more posts on this process as I proceed in my writing journey.

That’s it for this post. See ya all next time!