November Newsletter

I’ve returned the structural edits for ‘Minds of Sand and Light’ to the publishers, who then sent it through to the line editor. The structural edit looks at the plot as a whole, and any issues with plot holes or weakness in description (fortunately there weren’t many of either!) The line edit is a more thorough review, done by a different person, that looks closely at grammar, punctuation and sentence structure. She’s also identified my favourite words that I tend to over-use – and the Patrons on my Patreon have been seeing a lot of them in the early stages!

I have received the line edits back, and now I have to spend the next two weeks tweaking, polishing and making the manuscript the very best it can be.

Logan Library Self-Publishing

The workshop was a huge success, here’s some of the comments from attendees:

“Fantastic presentation! Super grateful that Logan library put this on”

“Absolutely wonderful. Lots of great tips and a great presenter who kept us focused and entertained.”

“Great workshop. More needed from Kylie Chan. So much knowledge to help writers.”

– I’m feeling really good about this one!

I even made it with time to spare out of my house on the first day of the Stupid Car Races. Parts of Main Beach are still covered in big chunks of racing-car tyre (particularly where that big accident happened. One of my friends who was in Adelaide watching the race, messaged me with ‘Did you hear that?!’)

Cover Art for ‘Minds’

As I mentioned in a previous post, Harper-Collins are thinking of using an AI art generator to produce the core art. I’ve talked before about how hard it was to get a pic of a soldier in a tunic for Jian (and kept getting body parts) so I gave it a go with DALL-E. If this had been available when Dragon Empire was produced, ca

The AI, just like the stock photos, cut heads off (these are the full pics, and I asked for ‘full length’):

I wanted something a bit more active, so I asked for that, and got these, which are closer, but it’s still cutting heads off:

So I zoomed in on the one on the top right, which looks like a good starting point, and got OH HELL NO.

The hand thing appears to be a common problem with AI-generated art, which is ironic because it’s one of the biggest issues that budding artists have. Hands are hard.

Anyway! Back to the edits for ‘Minds’, and I’ve posted a new section from the Simone story on the Patreon.

I have no more appearances left for the year, so when I’ve gone through the line edits for ‘Minds’ I will have a chance to stop for a while. I’ll post a picture of the ARC (Advance reader copy) if I receive one. Nearly there!