Summer Holidays and REWRITES.

Well some people accuse me of being on holiday all the time (yes, Mrs. Chadda, that means you) not realising me lying eyes closed on the sofa is 'plotting'. When I'm doing that and snoring it's called 'deep plotting'.
School's out and we've just spent the last week in sunny Southwold. Beach-huts, freezing North Sea dips and a very, very nice fish and chip shop.
Trying to squeeze in the rewrite as we proceed and it's a fairly major shake up, not a little polish.
REWRITES.
1- Does it make sense? First drafts are your chance to throw in all those wild and wacky ideas and not worrying quite how it all lands. That's what you need to fix on the re-write.
2- Character motivations. That's part of 1, actually, but so important it should have it's own section. Make sure the characters act in accordance to their nature. We must understand their motivations wrt to everything they do, even if they don't.
3- Get you facts right. The Moscow trip was all part and parcel of that. Locations, descriptions, history, all of that. Translations. I've Russian characters. They speak Russian. Could be tricky.
4- Seemless exposition. Not big clunks of text you've copied from Wikipedia, okay?
5- Is it consistent with the first book? Hey, it's been so long I'd forgotten who was dead, disabled and basically where I left everyone at the end of Devil's Kiss. It's the minor secondary characters you tend to forget. Don't.
I'm sure there's more stuff but that's what's concerning me right now. Aim is to try and get it finished by end of August.
Other news...
DEVIL'S KISS comes out in the US in a few weeks. A free copy or two might be available soon, competition-wise. Hmm, the wrap around cover. I love it.
DARK GODDESS front cover has appeared! I can't wait to show you this one, but it's a work in progress, there're issues regarding the sword design and such. But Puffin have done their usually awesome job. I've been very blessed by some seriously cool covers, IMHO.
Summer reading so far- PERCY JACKSON ATSOM, OUTLAW (Robin Hood story from Alan Dale's POV), SHARPE'S TRIUMPH, and HUNGER GAMES. All extremely good and HG is as good as everyone says it is. Learning from the masters.