I think that I am finally done with my revision of A Lonely Magic. Well, or almost done. Before I post it, I’d love to have a few careful readers take a look and make sure I haven’t introduced a bunch of typos. Or really, any typos at all. If you’re interested, reply in the comments or send me an email.

This wasn’t supposed to be a major revision — it was going to be little tweaks, here and there, with one big but still minor change. But of course once you’re in the file… well, I just kept playing. It’s still much the same book. If I had a document comparison tool, it would be interesting to look at the first published version side by side with this version to see how many words I really did change — not many, I suspect, given how much time I put into it. But I made it slightly more YA-friendly. Still with plenty of swear words, though.

The big change was eliminating Theresa, the bookstore owner. She was originally important because Fen’s journey was going to take her back to her starting place. Maybe Fen’s journey still will take her back to her starting place eventually, but I suspect that by the time she gets there, Theresa will have been long since forgotten. Eliminating her also tightened the beginning & made Fen more active — she’s not pushed into accepting Kaio’s help, she chooses to go with him in order to stay alive.

Along with the revision, I have a new cover. When I hired the designer, I sent her a PDF showing all the previous covers, including the ones that I never wound up using. There were nine of them. Nine! That didn’t include minor variations — that was nine totally different covers. Along the way, I worked with six different cover designers (if I can count myself as one of those designers, which I am going to.) So this cover is the tenth cover and the seventh designer. I’m hoping those will be lucky numbers.

Book cover for A Lonely Magic with a girl surrounded by waves, and a blue phoenix pattern behind the title. Very blue.
I call this the princess Fen cover.

Revising A Lonely Magic is the kind of quixotic act that a traditional publisher would never go for — sales of the book just don’t justify it. So is writing a sequel, actually. I haven’t done the math recently, but between the professional editor I hired, all those covers, and the marketing I did when I released the first version… well, I’m pretty sure I broke even. But a new cover and many days spent revising were impractical at best. That’s okay, I love the new cover. And I love the revision, too. Let me know if you want an early look at it.