Boy oh boy, today was a day that illustrated the great peril of beta readers.

About three weeks ago I received a manuscript of one of the new Lantham books from my oldest and most weather-eyed beta reader. It came in right under the publication wire, and most of the stuff she caught was the normal garden-variety continuity stuff that she’s extremely good at.

She also caught a flawed premise. A simple little thing…and it was one I’d based almost half the novel on.

As soon as I found the note, I knew I was in trouble. I decided to postpone publication and stew about whether or not I was going to listen to it. If I didn’t listen to it, I could push two books out the door very quickly–which is what we’d been planning on.

After a couple weeks of sitting on it, though, I knew I had to listen. It might only throw a tenth of the readers out of the story, but that’s a tenth of readers I might lose on Lantham forever.

So, today, I spent three shifts going over the manuscript. I thought it would take one, but this premise is embedded so deeply in the story that I am having to go through with a fine tooth comb.

It’ll probably take another full day to finish up all the changes, and then one more to print the book out, and go through it with Kitty once more with a red pencil to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

In between that, I had to deal with compliance filings for the corporation. It’s not the first corporation I’ve owned, not even the first one I’ve run, but it’s the first one where I’ve been point on the compliance stuff, and there is a learning curve involved.

So, I didn’t get to the Great Book In Question and writing until well after 3am, when I as already pretty damn fried. I didn’t get much done, but I kept my toe in.

So, here’s the damage:

Starting word count for writing: 20,883
Final word count for the day: 21,825

20,883 / 120000 words