You’ve all probably been wondering, what the heck has Author Pat been up to these past few months? And where the heck is book 2 of The Hoarding Series? Well, let me update you.
I sent book 2, The Lost Soul, to my Beta Readers back on August 9th. Some people are probably thinking, what the heck is a beta reader?
A beta reader is a person who reads and tests an unreleased work of literature, who provides feedback to the author from the point of view of an average reader. Beta readers are not professionals. These are normal readers who provide me feedback related to plot, pacing, consistency, character development, and overall enjoyment of reading the story. A beta reader has the power of voicing his or her opinion on what they liked and disliked from the story. Beta readers in the past have saved characters from dying, changed a character’s personality or back story, or even simply changed a character’s name. The author gets to a certain point in their story where they become blind. It is the beta reader’s job to look past that blindness and see things the author can’t.
This is my favorite part of the writing process. Why? Because I get to see how much better this book can possibly be with the help from the creative minds of my Beta Readers!
Now that I have finally collected all the documents back from my informative beta readers, it’s time to get back to writing for the final home stretch as I browse through all the comments and rewrite the final draft of The Lost Soul.
While going through the many documents, I found an important feature of combining comments of multiple documents into one single master document. I will write a separate post just for this amazing feature. This has literally saved me weeks and weeks of work, and I hope it will save another writer many hours of sorting through their beta reader comments.
While my informative beta readers were working hard, I took a break from writing as I settled into my new life in San Roque, Spain. More posts of my journey to Spain will come soon. And I will also share a few posts about the one-year anniversary of my first book, Junkland, the first book in The Hoarding Series. I cannot believe it has been a year already…
This has been a wild writing journey, and my Beta Readers have been a huge part of it. So let’s give a big round of applause and a HUGE thank you to my Beta Readers for doing an amazing job. Already so much will change to make The Lost Soul the best it can possibly be. And it’s pretty darn good ;).
Here’s some feedback from my Beta Readers:
Anonymous Beta Reader Number 1:
I really liked it—my attention was held, I was curious, I’m excited to see what happens and read the next book. I think the story line is better than book 1—it’s more intricate. The plot and all the details are just great! I don’t know how you think of it! Sequels are rarely better than the original, but this one could be because of all the details and all the new information. And all the tantalizing bits.
Anonymous Beta Reader Number 2:
I enjoyed it. I am happy to be back and find out what happened to the characters. One of the things you did really well in the first one is make the characters relatable—I care what happens to them. I really liked returning to the characters and hearing what they think and were doing up to this point. Pacing is by far one of the best things in your novels that highlights your writing. I never feel like scenes drag, or are glossed over when I want them to dwell more. You apply the perfect amount of weight to the scenes.
Anonymous Beta Reader Number 3:
Great book. You have one creative mind!
Anonymous Beta Reader Number 4:
I liked the mystery. Throughout the whole book we were still in the dark about a lot of items. We were let in on a lot of these items, but I like how we did/do not know everything, it leaves some stuff up to the imagination.
