‘Whoa! Even with the intro, I didn’t see this coming,’ she wrote in the mark up at one point. And that’s when I knew for sure I had the perfect editor! She had probably used up all the red ink she had salvaging my book by the time she sent back the first half of the manuscript. Those words were possibly worth as much to me as all the editing. Words of encouragement mean a lot!
Sure, my extremely supportive wife had been my sole beta reader, but I had only wanted her to look for plot holes. She crossed out all the “of courses” and probably kept Victoria from mailing this thing back to me after shredding it. I am sure a few snuck through anyway of course.
One friend told me he was astonished that I wrote this in a week, pecked at it a few weekends over a few chaotic months, and then finished revising it over two weeks. But those were tough weeks as I poured my heart into this. Where it flows and works well is where I left things alone after Victoria painstakingly tweaked things. This book was hardly past first draft stage in my opinion when I sent it to her. I don’t know how she managed to survive it.
After 20 years (sorry, Chicago Manual of Style) of starts and stops with several projects, this one was my unplanned surprise prequel to several series in unfinished status. I am not sure if I would have ever pushed it to Amazon without her diligent line editing, feedback, and words of encouragement.
I highly recommend Victoria!
