I took two weeks off. With the last of the major revisions completed I had to stop. The words were nothing but a blur. I'm sure there are still many more words, phrases and sentences which just aren't needed, but I could not see them.

Tomorrow is the end of that two week vacation and begins yet another task to catch grammar and punctuation errors. Also, I'll be going through my beta readers comments as I stretch my muses English Degree. We've decided to read the entire book aloud to each other. Reading it aloud is a technique often suggested for catching and fixing problems with pace and flow. This may seem like a tortuous exercise for accomplished/published authors. For me and the muse it seems most advisable.

It should be fun to actually hear the inflections my wife puts into the story. I'm sure she'll have plenty of suggestions on how to increase/decrease tension, exposition, narrative and dialogue.

When that is done I expect one last trial to put it through and a decision to make. I'll send it to a copy-editor for the extraction of my eye-teeth. If all goes well the book should be ready by the first of next year.

The decision will then be, do I self-publish or pitch to a publisher? I'm still not satisfied with the book cover and don't have the money to hire a professional. Well, I'm a great procrastinator so I'll shelve that decision until later.