Fire Team Bravo, stand ready.
So, I’ve gotten all of my feedback on 47 Echo 2 from my Alpha Team of beta readers (yeah, say that a bunch of times fast), and while they weren’t brutal, they did point out some errors I’m in the process of fixing, so that’s a good thing.
The next step will be to send it off to Fire Team Bravo — a few friends of a literary bent who actually expressed some kind of fondness for the first book. The reason for this is that I want to have perspective from both sides of the table, both those who didn’t dig the first one and those who did (though one of my Alpha Team told me she really liked this one, so I must be doing something right this time around).
And then, after another week, it goes off to my editor. Now, this one hasn’t been sold yet — my publishers haven’t even seen a tiny little piece of what I’m working on. If you want to ensure that 47 Echo 2 comes out, of course, you can go buy 30 or 40 copies of the first one. (I am, of course, joking.)
I’m interested in you guys, though. Through what critique gauntlets do you run your work? How do you know when it’s done?