
Twisted Oaths by Sue Babcock
It was a long time coming, but the book is finally finished and published through CreateSpace.
After editing it seven times, changing the names of the characters three times, and expanding and contracting various parts, I could finally feel okay about publishing. But first, just to make sure, I asked two more people to beta (gamma? delta?) read the book. One was an avid reader and long time friend from my Girl Scout troop many decades ago. The other is the town historian for Hastings, England, which is where most of the book takes place. I sent out the manuscripts and waited, rather anxiously, for their replies. And waited. And waited.
Deciding they weren’t going to have time for the reviews (it can be very time-consuming), I started thinking about the title and cover again. Changed the title five times and the cover four, and wasn’t really excited about either, but I needed to get off dead center and get this published.
The day I decided it was time, a review from my long time friend popped up into my email inbox. She had awesome suggestions with respect to names, word usage, and details. I had to include these suggestions. So I pulled up the file again on my computer and reworked several scenes, and renamed the blacksmith (again).
I was sure I was done now. A little tweak on the cover and time to publish. This time an email from the Hastings historian showed up just as I was reading through the manuscript “one last time.” More great suggestions and corrections. And she is English, and she is from Hastings, and she is a historian – how could I not use the information she sent. A few more reworked scenes and word replacements, and once again I’m ready to publish.
And then a comment from a friend pops up out of the blue on a forum where I had posted my cover and title. The friend thought my cover needed a little work. Another friend thought my title needs changing. More tweaks. And a decision that the cover was all wrong. A complete redesign followed resulting in the cover shown here. I absolutely know this was the right cover with the right title.
The book is now published via CreateSpace and is available on Amazon, as well as CreateSpace. A Kindle version is also for sale on Amazon.