Beta Readers
for Michael Campling
Hello ,
Well, I asked for feedback, and It was humbling to have such a wonderful response. 21 people signed up, and everyone apart from two people downloaded the book. I don't know what happened to those two.
Of the 19 beta readers, only 1 person didn't get on with the book, and there were 2 people who didn't provide any feedback at all.
That left me with 16 sets of feedback, many of them very detailed. I printed out all the emails, and some of them ran to several double-sided pages. Whatever the length of the feedback, each person had something valuable to contribute, and it was fascinating to receive the benefit of all those different perspectives.
This book was, as one reader put it, a diamond in the rough, and there were plot holes and errors and mix-ups throughout. Some of these arose because the book is so darned long! It took me a long time to write, and I struggled to keep track of the threads. Also, I changed my ideas as I went along.
Here, for your own interest, are a few of the main changes I've made.
As many of you noticed, I'd originally intended Zadie to be a person of colour, but for some reason, my mental image of her brother was of a white man. This was a muddle of my own making, and it was simpler to make Zadie white as well. This saddened me, but other solutions, such as making Tobias a half brother, would've introduced yet more plot elements, and there are already plenty of those.
The plot involving Peter and DS Kulkarni was somewhat separate from Dan's investigation. I tried removing it, giving the job of catching Peter to Spiller and Collins, but I couldn't get it to work. Without the trail leading up to Peter's arrest, it would've felt very contrived to have him caught at the end. Peter couldn't be allowed to go free. He was an important character because, in the guise of Jack, he looked like the prime suspect when Karen was killed.
Speaking of Karen, one reader pointed out that the name didn't fit well with her background, so she has become Philippa. I understand that Philippa means someone who loves horses, and since her mother was a keen rider, that seemed to fit nicely. I've also given her the title she mentioned - The Honourable Philippa Darley-Jones - and she mentions that her father was a baron.
A couple of chapters were out of chronological order, so Zadie woke up in the middle of the night before Kulkarni had left work for the day. They were easy to swap.
Some fixes were easy, others took much more time.
As one reader said, it was likely that Zadie would've had blood tests done when she was hospitalised, so the drugs in her system might well have been found. This wasn't good for my timeline, so I had to go back into Zadie's past. The doctors would have learned of her medical history and would've known that she'd been prescribed certain drugs in the past. They didn't know that she'd stopped taking them, and with a bit of fancy footwork, we find that some drug tests can have false positives. In this case, the diet drug phentermine was giving a false positive for the antidepressants Zadie had been prescribed. The doctors saw what they were expecting to see, and a medical mix-up ensued. It was only later, when Zadie was awake, that she insisted she hadn't been taking antidepressants and the tests were looked at again.
Zadie's broken legs have been magically fixed. The fall wasn't bad enough to cause that injury, and besides, it would've left her injured for quite a long time. Yes, her legs are still painful, but the fact that she hit her head when she landed was the most important thing.
Zadie has become a little more business minded, but she's still a rather larger than life character. How much of that flightiness is the image she portrays? You must decide for yourself.
As one reader said, Zadie disappeared into the background once she was in hospital, so she now has her own final chapter in which she looks at her life and decides to move on, making a new path for herself.
Natalya, a popular character, now doesn't cut Tobias to the bone. That was me getting carried away. And Tobias, less injured but still with a dislocated shoulder, isn't in such great shape when he tries to run away. He howls with pain when handcuffed, but he deserves it.
There were more points raised and addressed, but this email, like the book, is becoming rather long.
Before I sign off, you may be interested to hear about one thing that went unnoticed.
I happened to see that the owner of the boxing gym and Mr Franks' terrier were both called Mickey. The dog was named after a terrier belonging to a man who used to live in my village, and the gym owner was named after a man I used to know many years ago who was a wheelchair user. Like the fictional Mickey, he took part in wheelchair sports and was quite a character. I renamed the terrier Banjo after a dog belonging to a neighbour.
Finally, I have to mention the typos!
Endless, endless typos. I think my typing is getting worse! Although I didn't ask for typos to be reported, it was really helpful to have them pointed out. Of course, many of you noticed the same typos, and there were so many that it was hard to remember whether I'd fixed each one, so I often had to recheck. I need a better way to deal with these things, but that's for another time and another book.
You would think that no typo would escape all those pairs of eyes, but even when I checked the last set of feedback, there were typos that had slipped past the previous readers.
I'll finish by saying a huge thank you to everyone who took the time to help me. I am so grateful for all the time and effort you put in. As I said at the top of this email, it's humbling to think that you'd do all that hard work just to help me.
Thank you very much - you're a star.
I'm off to brew a cup of tea, and then I'll have to decide whether to read through the whole book again before sending it to an editor.
One way or another, this book is going to arrive in the stores, and thanks to you, it will be immeasurably better than it would otherwise have been.
Thanks again and all the best,
Mikey
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