Of Things Overlooked and an Ode to Dee Tenorio

This past weekend, I completed the read-thru of the galley/ARC for Hunter of the Heart. All told that makes approximately 9 rounds of edits/critiques by 7 people (including myself). And I still found stuff that needed fixing.

Some of it was just me being nitpicking about what I perceived to be awkward phrasing. But there was no way in heck I was going to get those type of edits approved at this late stage, although I think I made a case for a couple of the most heinous examples that would really pull the reader out of the story.

Some of it was straight up wft-typos (ie, using ‘almost indictable’ to describe a scent, when it should have been ‘almost indiscernible’. Yeah, 7 peeps, 9 rounds of edits, and no one caught that until now).

But these things happen... and now for the segue...

I started Hunter of the Heart almost 5-7yrs ago. Wrote it for fun on the fly--exchanging chapters with other writer friends-- in between giving my then-current ms Denial (title later changed to Felicity Stripped Bare) a major overhaul. At some point I realize that I might have a little gem in HotH, so I stopped working on it, with the intention of going back to really flesh it out and finish the story once I could give it my undivided attention.

Dee Tenorio was one of the peeps who read those initial ‘just for fun’ raw chapters. Fast forward all these years later and she was one of the peeps who gave the finished manuscript a read-thru/critique. Dee emailed me and asked when was a good time to call me with her feedback.

Yeah, it was as painful as that.

But you know what, she was dead on in her feedback.

(That I chose to ignore for the most part. Lol)

Because the gist of her feedback was that the story needed more fleshing out.

Well, I submitted that sucker anyhow to Samhain and guess what my then-editor said in her revise and resubmit letter…. Ahem.

In my defensive, my then-editor did say that she would understand if I didn’t want to undertake the work involved in extending/fleshing out the story.

So I did what I should have done after Dee and I hung up the phone. I fleshed out the story. I was still aiming to keep it novella/category length though. The story would have needed some major restructuring (imo) for single-title length.

With all the insane workload/long hours at my day job, it took a good 5 mths to get the revisions done. I had a couple of brave souls give another crit on the revised version and sent it in.

Fast forward another 5months. Book had another revise/resubmit, and several rounds of edits--part of which was to write a dedication.

Ahem.

Yeah, guess who I forgot in my dedication. How the hell did I do that?!? Keeerist.

And the chick called me long distance (from another country) to give me her feedback.

So Dee, here’s my dedication to you:

You are an amazing critique partner, honest, tough, funny and generous. A talented writer, and wonderful friend. And I count myself lucky knowing you.

Dear Dee,

Woe is me.

As you will see

I carelessly

Forgot thee

As a listee

On page three:

The dedications.

As for the other kick-ass bad-ass peeps that I didn’t forget to name, all dem bitches will have to wait for the release to read the dedication. Lol



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