It has been a long journey but it’s finally real.
The Black Pool has been a part of my life for nigh on ten years. It was
written, then re-drafted, and re-drafted again and again over the years with
grammar changes, spell checks, name changes, plot additions and subtractions,
but for the most part, the story never changed.
Then came the trepidation when it was complete. How
to get it published? I’m grateful that Austin Macauley Publishers had faith in
me and the story. They’ve given me the opportunity that I desired so much, to
see my book in print.
It wasn’t a quick process mind you, with Brexit and
the Covid pandemic causing uncertainties and delays, never mind the usual
copy-editing, deciding on a book cover, and all of the other little things I
hadn’t originally thought about.
And finally, I received the final proof!
I went through the proofs myself, chapter by chapter line by line and page by
page. In addition to checking my corrections, my wife Sinéad also went through
each chapter – line by line, page by page – to ensure that my corrections
didn’t create an error by accident.
To me, the dialogue in the book didn’t need to be
grammatically correct; it needed to reflect the Dublin or other relevant
accents. The process of error checking and correcting is tedious and it is
possible that one or two errors slipped through, although not too many I hope.
Eventually the proofs were agreed and returned to the publisher and a
publishing date was agreed.
The Black Pool is 330 pages long, so there are
significant opportunities for minor errors to have slipped the net, despite the
best efforts of everyone involved, hopefully the readers
will enjoy the story so much that they will be content to ignore any
minor errors there may be.
So if you do spot an error in my book, please be
kind. Contact me and hopefully the error can be rectified in the next edition.
More than anything I would ask for your review of
the story itself. Please, if you have read and enjoyed The Black Pool, leave a
review here, it would be greatly appreciated.
It has been a long journey to get to here, but this
is just the beginning of a new chapter….
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