Basilisk Project Update Jan 6th

Back in November I had formally started the Beta Read process, where I picked ten folks from a pool of volunteers to do a "Beta Read" for my first full book: "Basilisk". When the process started, I had targeted two months as the overall turnaround time, which made the first of January about the time that I would be expecting to get back completed Beta Read notes.

I will likely blog more about the process in detail, and how I conducted my first official Beta Read, but for now, I want to stick to a project update.

So the information is coming in, and now begins the process of sorting through it all and figuring out what changes need to be made. The information ranges from small grammatical errors that still exist in the manuscript (in many places it would seem that I created more problems when I tried to fix grammatical problems in my polish edits before the beta read). So those obviously have to be fixed.

In other instances the information is a bit more vague, but I am of the mindset that all information is of use. In my limited beta read experience, as well as having read whatever information I could get my hands on about the process from other authors, I understand that not all input should be acted upon. Just because one person sees something wrong with one character does not mean that character is flawed, but that perhaps there was just something about that character that bothered that one person.

However now comes the difficult task of figuring out what I should act upon and what I should not.

There are a few more people who have yet to complete their work and get back to me, but for now I have plenty enough to sort through.

My first step will be to take what feedback people have provided to me regarding the first three chapters and begin incorporating that as soon as possible. This is due to the fact that I have to provide them to the first place I want to submit to: TOR publishing.

Over the next two weeks I plan to go through everything regarding the beta read information, compiling all of it into a single location, try to identify any trends (where multiple people noticed the same things or felt there were flaws in the same places).

Hopefully, by the end of the month, I can have a final submissions packet ready to go out to TOR containing a solid, beta read polished version of the first 3 chapters.

CC