Right now CtM2 is in copyedits, which means someone with a great eye for detail, Brenna Franzitta, is helping me find things like inconsistencies with the first book, word repetitions, grammar and punctuation errors, and so on. Brenna worked on the Divergent books, too, so we go way back. She probably knows all my favorite words. (Sorry, Brenna.)
This is what it all looks like behind the curtain!
This page is from somewhere in the middle of the book. Akos and Cyra have just landed on Ogra, the mysterious "shadow planet" on the far reaches of their solar system. No one knows much about Ogra-- even the best surveillance technology can't penetrate its dense, dark atmosphere-- and Ograns seem to like it that way.
But they have allowed the Shotet exiles-- the Shotet who were forced to flee the tyrannical Noavek regime-- to see their planet, as Cyra and Akos see it here.
Here you can see the copy editor, Brenna, checking on the capitalization of a term I keep using when the characters are on Ogra: "The Storm." I write my books out of order, and about halfway through writing this one, I apparently decided that "The Storm" should be lower case and plural ("the storms"). Alexandra, the production editor, is noting this inconsistency even further. I get to decide which is correct, the capitalized singular version, or the lower case plural version, and then we all have to make sure that every single instance of this phrase matches throughout the book. (I chose lower case plural.)
Ogra is a strange, dangerous place. I can't wait for you guys to read about it more.
I spotted a little remnant of an earlier draft here, which is that Akos presses his mouth into a line--a kind of placeholder line to remind me he's tense. Originally I thought Akos might be uneasy on a new planet, but as I delved into his character more, I realized he might actually delight in it. So there's no need to have a physical indication of his tension here.
Just zooming in so this is easier to read! I love this Akos and Cyra moment. Cyra is still surprised to discover that she has anything in common with anyone, and Akos is still a bit guarded, embarrassed that he's revealed so much about himself. Neither of them is very good at this whole relationship thing yet.
All right, that's all I can share about CtM2 for now. But as a way of kicking off this newsletter, I'm going to be sharing something later this week that you can only find here! So stay tuned, tell your friends, grab a snack...or just stay tuned, that's also fine.
-V
(I promised puppies, so this is my dog Avi when she was very small.)