The State of the Jana

Just popping in long enough to let you guys know I’m on the downhill run on BRIAR ROSE which will be off to my London editor this weekend. It’s turned out to be a surprising story, one I hadn’t quite anticipated. Right now I’m cleaning up continuity issues because I came up with a nifty (or at least I HOPE it’s nifty) plot twist and had to go back into the manuscript and strip out the previous plot thread. Oy.

I’m also working on those five senses. Some authors have those lovely details in the first draft. Me? I’ll still be working on them right before the book goes to press. Adding a couple of those senses in a scene makes it more vivid and that’s not easy for me. But I shall persevere.

One of the amusing parts of writing for a London publisher is that I’m changing over to British spelling and punctuation. So where an American would type “realize” the Brits use “realise”. I’ve set my MS Word program (programme) to spell check for British words and now I have difficulty not using them in my everyday emails. When the book is sold into the U.S., all those will be converted back to our version of English. Kinda fun, actually.
So that’s the current “State of the Jana”. Once BRIAR ROSE is off to the editor I’ll be working on the Riley/Beck Scotland novella and trying to clean that up. I also have a paranormal romance (TANGLED SOULS) I’m working on. Then I’ll flip back to BRIAR ROSE when the revisions come in. I’m hoping to get as much done before the end of May when it all goes “pear shaped” as the Brits would say (5 conventions and a new continent in the period of two months).
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I’ll keep you folks in the loop as to news and stuff. Have a very lovely Spring!

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