Well, the first edits (beyond my own) to No Way to Start a War will be finished today.  I’ll then get it back and run through all of the editor’s notes and change things as necessary.  That shouldn’t take too long, maybe a week.  Then NWTSAW gets released to three other family/friends who will look at the manuscript concurrently.  The beauty of this system is that one is a perfectionist who will look at absolutely everything, one was an English teacher for 30+ years that will rip my grammar and composition apart, and the last one is just a plain remarkable storyteller that will find flaws in characters/plot lines.  I suspect it will take them a month or so to get through the book and make notes.  I don’t want to rush them through the process because we are still well on-schedule for my target Fall release and more than anything, I want to meet the bar that was set with the excellent editing job done with This Corner of the Universe.

I’m both anxious and excited to get the feedback.  NWTSAW is definitely a different book.  The “feel” is different because while the focus is still on the characters you met in TCOTU, the scope is much larger.  Additionally, while there is plenty of military conflict in the book, there is also conflict between characters in the story.  The main characters in TCOTU were kind of like the Universe of The Brady Bunch.  They all got along, they all had deep ties to each other, everyone was 100% for each other.  In Book Two, with the scope expanding from a single ship to a squadron/group, not everyone gets along so well.  I’ve hopefully captured the competing ambitions that occur in the military between military members in a realistic fashion without falling into the standard, stereotypical “he’s the good guy, he’s the bad guy” models.  We’ll see.

Look for an October-ish release unless something goes horribly wrong with the editing process.