Project R (Page 2 of 3)

Just out of curiosity, where does Lenore fall on the good/evil spectrum? Her red wings (on your cover) suggest she's not all good. Her indifference to the sword thief's fate adds to my impression.

Photo shoot picked for another go at J3nna cover. I've had some feedback from market readers and have a path forward. Also thanks to Bobbi. I think this will be the one that works

Covers sap a lot of my energy. It's one of the few things I like about traditional publishing... let someone else fuss about that. lol

However I like most of mine, so I guess I shouldn't complain. One I'm cooking up has required me to manually place tens of thousands of houses. It's been worked on on/off for the past few years

I don't advise going live with unworked stories & typos galore. Unlike in the good old days, the reviews that will come in will kinda stick to you. I generally pass mine to an editor.

As for the cover, I burn too much energy seeking perfection. Oh, and the model's doing some video for my ads, which is going to be awesome. It's gonna be super spooky

Tons of SPAG for starters. Take J3nna who went up on this site for 3 rounds of revision... Chapter 3 alone got 18 reviews and they still found stuff to mark up

1.  They were excellent with big picture. Since they were reading in a short number of sittings they of course saw things that reviewers would see months apart. For example they caught that [K i m] referred to her "husband" several chapters before she was married. It's not that reviewers missed it, it's that they're tackling other books at the same time where she was already married. And dealing with reposted where she married in a prior version. Not easy to keep all that data straight.

They were also able to hit data dumps and slow parts. Question the use of certain characters

2. They found stuff that snuck by us all
Agreement:

Tense

Readability

3. They're wordy (like me lol)
I tend to cut too many words. Sometimes I'm reading my own sentence and can't parse out my meaning lol

For J3nna, I think they hit around 300 markups (I used about 75%). They were worth their weight in gold

Hah, well that's a nuisance

https://www.wikihow.com/Carry-a-Girl

When I wanted to get Joseph and Paul to Earth, I had them accidentally board a slaver disguised as a passenger ship headed for Maya Reborn. When I wanted to get Connor to the Holy Land against the will of the Council of Cardinals, I had a demon stab him almost to death. Both great fodder for later story development. Leonardo probably would never have existed without the slaver plot twist. "Merda!" he howled.

In other words, find an excuse for someone to carry her across in spite of her objections. If it's done against her will, she doesn't have to worry about being embarrassed. Can she go across unconscious? Have her try to cross on her own and faint, with somebody to then carry her across. Or have someone knock her out first without warning. Can she step across without being carried? If so, have her attacked at the portal and kicked across. If her feet must leave the ground, kick her so she becomes airborne.

Three it s. Lenore is highly unimpressed

The light blue doesn't stand very well. Go with yellow. Imagine this as a thumbnail on Amazon.

I'm heavily into 2nd revision and have a trouble spot... at one point Laine is mocking Sara Mindus.

She jokingly calls him "A Boy Named Sarah"

Reviewers unilaterally edited this to "Sue" but it would not make sense for her to say this.

I tried just now to patch it so the angels call her out for not knowing the lyrics, but that hasn't worked (they have no reason to know the lyrics or even who Johnny Cash is. And if they did, why would they help her mock them?).

Thoughts?

Laine steps back. “What’s the story behind this Boy named Sarah?”
Sara Mindus puffs his chest out. “SA-ra! Not SAY-ra.”
“It’s a death angel title,” I add. “Similar to ‘Sir’ as you have on Earth.”

This is the part that's getting corrected. I haven't found a way to word it otherwise