Transformation: Final Draft Complete

A short pre-Christmas blog post to mark a major milestone.

Yesterday evening, I completed what should be the last set of changes in the final draft of Transformation. It's done, clocking in at just over 86,000 words, which is around 7,000 more than the first draft. That feels right – I trimmed quite a bit of unnecessary verbiage, but added several new scenes and chapters.

I think the first draft worked pretty well as a standalone novel, but was lacking a little as the denouement of a trilogy. The extra scenes filled that gap nicely, largely replacing exposition and important events happening off-screen with something slightly more interesting, which also closed off some of the secondary character arcs nicely. I'm happy.

Next steps? Well, first comes a very careful read-through of my final draft looking for any lingering typos. I'll also be keeping an eye out for any minor inconsistencies I may have introduced with my latest changes. I've tried to keep it coherent as I've been going along, but as I spotted one issue yesterday (paraphrasing...'she's never been hurt before!'...needing to add...'well, other than that time when...') there may be more lurking in the shadows.

In parallel with that, I'll be getting the collateral uploaded to the Amazon publishing website, making sure the blurb and cover still hang together as I'd envisioned.

Then, once it's complete, there's the routine chore of formatting of the Kindle and paperback editions, uploading and previewing them, before ordering a proof copy of the paperback. Once I've received that, assuming there are no major issues, I'll press the publish button for both editions, and wait for Amazon to perform their customary magic.

Finally, I'll update my website with links to the Amazon pages, and come back with a new blog post somewhere along the line with pictures of the paperback edition in my hands.

So, we're nearly there. It's probably looking somewhere mid-January at the moment, depending how much of the Christmas period turns into a drunken haze.

Merry Christmas, one and all (except you over there, yes, you know who you are), and hope you all have a wonderful New Year too.

P.S. No, I've no idea why I've started making my blog images go all sepia. Full, glorious colour will be restored when I publish, I promise.

[Update: having completed the check of the first three chapters, I've now updated the preview of Transformation available on this website, so it now contains the final text for the opening of the novel.]

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Another update to this post, one day later, as I realised I'd forgotten one piece of the jigsaw puzzle if you've been following my previous posts about the structure of the novel.

As I mentioned last time, this is the final section and chapter structure:

However, chronologically things are a bit different. Although there's a little overlap between the parts and timelines can get rather confused, this is a pretty good outline of the order in which things happen. You wouldn't want the story told like that though, it would spoil the fun!

As before, I'm adding whose perspective most sections are told from, although I've missed out one to leave a little excitement for when you read it!

Interlude: Consecration (Katinka Farkas)

Part 1: Proselytism (Nevin)

Part 3: Bardo (Nevin)

Interlude: Renunciation (Amy)

Interlude: Dissolution

Prelude: Ritual (Katinka Farkas)

Part 2: Apocrypha (Katinka Farkas)

Interlude: Epiphany (Pavel Petrov)

Part 4: Salvation (Multiple)

Part 5: Apostasy (Multiple)

The interludes are the most troublesome to pin down exactly as they tend to provide bridging scenes that overlap with the major parts to help the reader with the context switches that occur between the parts, or in one case, provide critical background history – that's Consecration, which used to be called The Foundation of the Continuity Church.