Authors and their characters are not alike. There are a multitude of ways that my main character and I differ, one is that Jaden is patient and I am not. So when I finished my first novel, I was erupting with eager happiness, which resulted in me shipping out the book as soon as I could. I don’t think I could’ve done anything differently, knowing and feeling what I did then. It had taken me six to seven years to conceptualize and write the novel, which in my opinion was enough waiting. When you’re that close to the finish line, you sprint, you don’t pace yourself.

The sprinting, as I huffed and puffed to get through and break the line of “I’m an official author!” meant I didn’t cross with the poise and grace I would’ve liked (looking back). The text wasn’t as tight or as clean as it could’ve been. There were too many adverbs. The cover, though I liked the concept, wasn’t as literal as I’d originally envisioned. Therefore one year later I decided to give it another go. One year’s rest from the book gave me a fresh perspective on the text. I read the book semi-backwards, starting with part three (the most recently written) and edited. I cut out words and whole sentences. I killed more pesky adverbs that have a nasty habit of poking into a story. I took it one chapter at a time and I didn’t rush. Then I started at the beginning, my chapter zero, and got more technical.

Did a lot change? No. The content stayed the same, the story wasn’t altered a bit. Nothing new was added (who’d want more scenes, anyway?), nor was anything significant subtracted. If you read the first edition, reading the revised edition will not be a different experience, unless of course you’re one of those people who spots errors in grammar. Then it’ll be more relaxing for you and you wan’t want to strangle me. In fact it was hard for me to spot errors called out to me by readers. Some were so small that I had to read sentences ten times before seeing what was missing or wrong. Our minds have a tendency to fill in the blanks for us, as mine had done.

The cover is new and different. As I said, I’d originally wanted a more literal interpretation, but saw it as too much work. I wanted to cross the finish line and enter the Published Author party. Over a year ago I thought that to create the cover I had in mind, I’d need to spend a lot of time drawing a realistic image of an arm, which meant i’d have to find a photo of an arm to draw. I didn’t think that I could just as easily use a real photo. For the revised edition cover, I searched the stock photography libraries and found a suitable image and modified it in Photoshop. I’m pleased with the result, and I’m eager to see it in its printed version, which will be a soft-cover, not glossy.

The Kindle version is available now. The printed paperback will be available next week. With the completion of the revised edition, I’ll now enter the book into its professional promotion phase, which is both scary and exciting!