“War To The Knife” is almost ready!

For the past ten days I’ve been working flat-out getting my latest novel, ‘War To The Knife’, ready for publication.  I’ve done a front-to-back edit every day, looking for errors, corrections and improvements, and finding three or four things on every pass that needed attention.  I’m sure I’ll have missed something, but I take pride in the fact that my readers have commented on how well edited my books are.  I don’t want to slack off on that.

Miss D. and I have selected a cover image – this one:

I’ll be seeing Oleg tomorrow to turn it into a proper cover, with title, author name, etc.  We’re going to try to make it a ‘wrap-around’ cover for the print edition, stretching from the front cover around the spine and continuing on the back cover.  For the e-book edition we’ll crop out part of the illustration, something like this:

Miss D. and I have also worked on the blurb together over the past couple of days.  Here it is:

Laredo’s defenders were ground down and its people ruthlessly slaughtered when the Bactrians invaded the planet.  Overwhelmed, its Army switched to guerrilla warfare and went underground.  For three years they’ve fought like demons to resist the occupiers.  They’ve bled the enemy, but at fearful cost. The survivors are running out of weapons, supplies, and places to hide.

Then a young officer, Dave Carson, uncovers news that may change everything.  An opportunity is coming to smash the foe harder than they’ve ever done before, both on and off the planet.  Success may bring the interplanetary community to their aid – but it’ll take everything they’ve got.  Win or lose, many of them will die. Failure will mean that Bactria will at last rule unopposed.

That risk won’t stop them. When you’re fighting a war to the knife, in the end you bet on the blade.

I’ve already uploaded the text file to CreateSpace, so all that needs is the cover before it goes through their approval process for the print edition.  The Kindle file for the e-book edition takes much less time to get approved, so I’ll do that tomorrow afternoon or evening.  With any luck, both versions will be available by mid-week.  Watch this blog for the announcement!

I think this is my best book yet.  I hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it.  Thanks to my alpha/beta reader team for their hard work and rapid response to changes.

Peter