My Writing Process: Beta Readers

Out my window, daffodils gently wave in the breeze, my father's pampas grass is peeking out from the brown remains of last year's growth, and trees are mostly in full bloom. It's spring. More importantly, for me as a writer at least, it's the long Easter weekend. And it couldn't have come at a better time. I'm just a few thousand words from having the first draft of my newest work in progress finished. It's my goal to have it completed by the time I head back to work on Tuesday. After that, it goes out to my beta readers. I don't know if all indie authors use them, but I have found them to be of great value. There are a few things I hope to get from beta readers.

• Proofreading I proofread my own work, but it's a long, long document (not long in terms of it really being a long book, but much longer than, say, an essay) and, in those 67,000 or so words, I miss things no matter how many times I read it. It's the whole theory of completion thing, where we see what we expect to see, not what is is actually there. For instance, how many of you noticed that I put is in that last sentence twice? Many won't have because the second wasn't supposed to be there and your brain skipped over it. I'm hoping if I put the book in front of enough eyes, they'll all notice things like that, which I've missed.

• Plot Holes We've all experienced them--a character comes from nowhere or something happens out of the blue and we go back to reread to see if we missed something, but we didn't because the author didn't give us enough information to have that character or event make sense. It's kind of like my English classes recently when I referred several times to a handout I'd distributed before someone in my fourth period class finally got brave enough to say, "Mr. S, we don't know what handout you're talking about." Turns out they were still inside my lectern where I'd left them. So I hope my beta readers can do that for me. Where are important things not made clear or left out altogether? Sometimes this happens when I go back and make a change somewhere early in the book and then don't carry out that change throughout. Other times it's just badly written, pure and simple. 

• Continuity  I have a unique situation in my books because they are parts of a series, so I have two competing issues. First, it needs to fit the larger arc of the series and the character development needs to start and continue on the track that I created in the earlier stories. But second, each book needs to be its own entity and a fully realized story all by itself. Not everyone reads your books in order. Yes, to fully appreciate the growth of Harry and Dee and Otis and Jenn, you really would be best served (and I would make more money) if you bought and read them in order. But that's just not reality. So I try to recruit readers who've read the first three as well as people who haven't read any of them. And I'm really asking those two groups to answer different questions. 

I don't really ask my beta readers for editing opinions, though I don't reject them out of hand if they offer them. If they tell me they don't like how I've drawn a character or a particular scene, or whether there's a better word or phrase I could use at any given time, then I'll examine it. But that's not really what I'm looking for from them. I want them to concentrate on reading the book as a reader, not an editor. Is it a technically correct, complete, fully realized story that stands on its own and also fits the broader arc I'm creating in the Shalan series? Those are the questions I want them to answer for me. 

Authors, do you use beta readers? If so, what do you ask of them? I'd love if you would share your ideas with me. 

But the larger question for me is to my readers who aren't necessarily authors: are any of you interested in being a beta reader for Shalan #4? If you have time to read and make some constructive comments in the next couple of weeks, please feel free to contact me. But be aware that you should only say yes if you can actually fit this in over the next couple of weeks. I really want to move forward with the next phase of the writing by mid-April. So if you have a bit of time and are interested in giving me a hand, please get in touch. 

It's Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas?

I know, I know--it's July and the high is predicted to be in the eighties here today. But I'm already getting that Christmas feeling. Why? Because I started a new Shalan story yesterday. It's a prequel set around the first Christmas that Harry and Dee had together, the one where he proposed. Spoiler alert--she says yes.

Plans are for this to be a short story at the moment. Who knows? It may grow into a novella. It will involve a case, though it will not have Harry's buddy Otis because, as you probably know if you've read my books, Harry and Dee fell in love in Louisville, Kentucky. He had gone there for seminary but dropped out when he found what he loved doing--detective work. She was there working on her master's degree. Harry's partner in crime will be his boss, the owner of the McCain detective agency, Lucas McCain. Lucas, older than Harry but still not completely darkened by his work, is Harry's mentor in the gumshoe business. In this story we'll see the origins of many of the ideals that Harry holds dear--and even some of his rules.

Karen Gillan, best known to
nerds as Amy Pond in
DOCTOR WHO, is the
woman I picture playing Dee
in a movie. I love her humor and
also how fierce she can be.  Plus,
she's just stunning. (beyouthful.net)

It's tentatively entitled "Harry and the Redheaded Angel" and plans are for it to come out in mid-november for free exclusively to members of my mailing list. It will go on sale to the public around Thanksgiving. This is going to be ebook only, though it may appear on paper in a collection someday. Unlike Marvel Studios, I don't have this stuff planned out through 2020 and beyond.

If you don't want to wait until Thanksgiving to get more Harry and Dee, never fear. In The Shadow, Shalan Adventure #3, will be available in paperback and for ebook in the fall. My target is to have it out by October 1, though it may be a little earlier than that. This book takes a darker turn than the first two. Harry and Dee, at the request of Harry's best friend Otis, a Parkersburg Police detective, go in search for a teen that may have run away. Her name is Jenn Bezaleel and Harry learns pretty quickly that running away from her seriously perverted family may be the smartest thing she could have ever done. Dee can't help much because she's quite pregnant with their first baby, Emma Grace, who was (sort of) introduced in the epilogue of Kisses and Lies. I won't say more for fear of too many spoilers. I don't say this often about my own writing, but I think it's really good. I believe people will either love it or hate it, though, because it's pretty heavy stuff.

I'm looking for a couple more beta readers for this book. If you have time to sit down and read it in the next week or two and are willing to be honest with me, please get in touch. Let me emphasize that I need this to be done in a timely manner. I'm on the, albeit self-imposed, clock. I need to get final edits done by the end of summer. So please only contact me if you honestly have the time to read for me soon.