I played hooky from work today. I was exhausted from dealing with the whole Dad situation and I really wanted to get through all of the Team’s edits for FV so I sat at my desk in my home office all day and worked.
I took my color-coded manuscript and used it to mark-up the Word document on the computer, the one I’d received from Meghan and Co. If I had color-coded the edit green, I left it the way the Team had it. If I’d marked it with pink, I changed the edit back to the original way I’d written it. If the edit was marked in yellow, I read it through several times, checked its grammar/spelling, and then made the edit, sometimes keeping what the Team had suggested, sometimes reverting to my original text, or occasionally writing something altogether different.
The Team asked me to rewrite one whole passage—about a half a chapter—converting it from one person’s point of view to another’s. I completely agree that the section works better as edited but I had to throw out some of my most poignant paragraphs about George McVay, another of my four narrators. In that section, I was trying to show his more human/loveable side through the eyes of his wife, Edith, but that was the only part of the book not written by one of my four narrators and the Team said they found that confusing. Chris made a similar comment when he read that section as well, so I definitely needed to rewrite it. In the revised version, Anna recounts a story Edith is telling about her husband at a party. I think it still conveys the message of George’s kinder/gentler side, but in a less-close perspective. However, weighing the pros and cons, I think this was the right decision to make.
I received my blurb from Karen Osborn. She wrote:
Lynne Heinzmann uses painstaking research and a gift for characterization to bring historical figures to life and recreate the tragic loss of the Larchmont. Carefully spun through the voices of those who survived and those who didn’t, this tale will draw you in and keep you in suspense until its final pages. Frozen Voices convincingly recreates the journey through both the icy waters of the Atlantic and the all too human heart.
I am so honored that Karen, Hollis, and Richard were so generous with their praise for FV.