It's been a busy old few days in chez Gilbert. Busy, but not complicated so this will be a relatively short Muse News this week.
It had been my intention to get the fourth draft of my current WIP (Work In Progress), 360, finished and ready for my beta-readers by the end of last week. However, in rewriting the opening third I have discovered I've negated some plot elements later in the story. They have to go before I can consider the fourth draft complete and in a fit state to hand over to my beta readers.
Also, after initially hacking 30,000 words from the original 142,000 (yeah, it was a mammoth) during the early days of working on the 4th draft, I appear to have inserted another 7,000 back in as new copy. That means I'll have to cull another couple of thousand to reduce it to be closer to the 110,000 target as well as clear up the loose plot issues.
Consequently, the original allocation of May for beta-reading is a very doubtful now, so I've revised my plans and June will now be set aside for beta reading (beta reader availability permitting).
The only other real news this week is that, as those who read last Thursday's Notes In The Margin will know, I've been dabbling in recording another audio book version of 360. I've only conducted basic tests with my new microphone to establish the kind of sound quality I'll be getting, which is much better than my previous efforts for the second draft.
I've also been trying out some new voices for the characters as I wasn't entirely happy with the majority that I chose to use last time. If the resulting audio book is good enough then, once the ebook has been published, I might look at pursuing the audio book idea further, possibly with an eye to commercial release, but that is a very tentative "might"!
For now I musty concentrate on finishing the fourth draft. My original target for completing it was the end of March, so I'm throwing every available hour at it at the moment so it isn't delayed any longer!
Hopefully by Muse News #3 I'll have much more to report!
