It took a lot longer than I expected, but perhaps it’s a better book for the delay. Last October I finished In Front Of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, and set it aside for what I thought would be a month, maybe two, before coming back to edit it.

I came back after the couple of months, then pulled off it to put finish touches on and publish Doctor Luke’s Assistant, which I did in March this year. During this time I was also working on The Candy Store Generation, and decided I really needed to get that finished. So I did, and it’s published. Finally I got back to FTSP, and had it edited and done around the first of June. Then a reader said he found a few errors in DLA, so I shifted to that, and with my wife’s help polished it and re-published it. That took up till early July.

I went back to FTSP, re-read it twice, with a round of relatively minor edits each time. One thing I added was some more motivation for the protagonist’s father. And I tweaked the final chapter umpteen times. Finally I considered it done, waiting only on the cover. My wife read it and came up with another fifteen or so typos and as many suggestions for something that wasn’t clear to her. I made those tweaks.

And, I had a cover. My son did it as a first draft. It didn’t quite convey the essence of the book, but it’s quite good. He’s a young professional, with a stressful job and an ancient house and an active social life, all of which keep him busy. So I told him not to worry about tweaking the cover, that when I had enough e-sales to pay for a cover designer I’d get the final cover made, both for the e-book and print book.

So the novel is available on Kindle and Smashwords, and is in the queue for addition to the Smashwords premium catalog.

We’ll see how it goes.