I am writing today to let everyone know, who may be reading or waiting for my posts (for instance the readers who started following me after winning a copy of Forebodings on Goodreads), that I am taking a pause from my writing updates.

Indeed, while reviewing the audiochapters Adam Watson is producing for the audiobook of First Eruption, I realized that the book is a mess, forcing me to make corrections to the text on the fly and forcing Adam to redo countless passages. No matter that I put the book through three rounds of editing, there were still too many errors of all sorts, and it is not what I should have put in your hands. I realize that if I am going to keep doing this on my own, without a publisher assigning a team of editorial reviewers to my books, then I need to slow down. With the writing (of the next book in the series), working with the translators of the French and Italian versions to help them understand the original text and acting as their reviewer, and reviewing the audiobook drafts, quality is starting to seriously suffer. It disappoints me for me, for you who purchased copies of First Eruption and wondered what happened, and it disappoints me for the story, itself, because releasing a mediocre text will harm it, too, by driving readers away, even if they had loved Book 1.

So, to help me focus, I have taken this “for-cause” pause in my updates and will continue it until the ongoing projects are completed…that is, for a few months, and if I post anything, it will only be to say hello. And once the current projects are complete, I will need to cut back on the number of simultaneous activities, unless I find someone to publish me and take care of all things editorial for me.

Finally, to those of you who purchased First Eruption and would like a copy of the revised version, please email me at ladipaolo@ladipaolo.net or message me on FB, and I will be happy to send you one. You can also leave me a message through the contact page on my site (https://ladipaolo.net/contact/) 

I wonder what other authors would say about this post. Maybe that I just killed the novel. Perhaps, but hopefully not. I don’t believe so. The story is still there to be told, and I will take it to its end, if only for a handful of readers.

Best, L.A.