Writing: One More Revision

In mid-June, I decided that I had done all I could for Song of the Silk Weaver and it was time to let it out into the world. Not immediately—in part because I need a few months to figure out what is always my least favorite task (probably because I’m least competent at it!), namely publicizing the release, and in part because I know from experience that glitches always sneak into “finished” files, revealing themselves only once the proverbial dust has a chance to clear. But since Kindle Direct Publishing now allows even print books to be scheduled, I decided three months would be enough time to check print proofs, make essential revisions, and upload the results.

Indeed, those initial author copies revealed certain formatting issues—the kind of thing that makes most people’s eyes glaze over, like whether the spine is perfectly aligned to center, but nonetheless in a subliminal way brand a work as unprofessional. I fixed those, uploaded a new version, then set the whole aside for a couple of weeks while I whipped the second draft of Song of the Sleuth into shape.

In those few weeks, one would think I might have come up with a publicity plan, but no, that didn’t happen. Still, when I went back to the print PDF to check it, I was glad I had waited. I found a few more mind-numbing formatting issues but also word repetitions, commas that failed to round properly, and even one substantive but essential change to bring my heroine’s and hero’s views into line with the social standards accepted in their own time.

The last, perhaps, is worthy of comment. I would be the first to admit that I do not force my heroines and, especially, heroes to express the often-benighted views of our ancestors. (Especially heroes because too often our male ancestors treated anyone unlike their exalted selves, including women, as dirt under their feet.)

Antagonists, yes. They can be nasty; that’s part of their job, after all. But my heroes do not beat their children, their wives, or even their servants. They may express prejudices, but only within limits or in ways that they later acknowledge to be short-sighted. (Marco does this, to a degree, in the new novel.) But since I want readers to like them and root for them to succeed, I rein in their behavior.

Yet there are times when reining them in becomes implausible. For example, the khanate of Astrakhan, where the novel begins, relied in part on slavery, and men who purchased women as domestic servants had a legal right to use them sexually without the women’s consent. (This trade, historically, included the participation of Venetian and Genoese merchants, although they had mostly withdrawn from the eastern Mediterranean by the 1550s, when this novel is set, so it was not an exclusively oriental phenomenon.) Although it was credible that a female slave who experienced such abuse might resent it and blame those less badly treated than herself, it was less credible that the hero and heroine would understand her resentment. Being good people, they do eventually acknowledge that the system in which they have grown up has flaws. But they now do so while acknowledging that most others don’t see the situation the same way.

I still haven’t uploaded the final file, although I did skim the PDF again after entering the corrections. Fortunately, I have until Labor Day to make changes, so I plan to wait a bit longer, then go through both print PDF and ebook files (one can contain errors the other does not) one last time before uploading. With luck, the next time I won’t find so much as an unwanted double space.

Either way, Song of the Silk Weaver will be available for purchase, in both print and ebook editions, on September 15, 2026. And with a full second draft of Song of the Sleuth in hand, I can focus my attention on my planned standalone novel, Catch a Falling Star.

Well, except for that publicity campaign …

Images: cover of Song of the Silk Weaver (incorporating Alexei Harlamoff's 1870s public domain painting Girl in a Red Shawl); image of a Venetian merchant (representing Marco Delfino, my hero) licensed from Adobe Stock.