Revising the novels

I have spent a gruelling eight weeks extensively revising The Castle of Heavenly Bliss and In This Vale of Tears. This has meant rewriting sloppy patches, eliminating what one reviewer called "redundant material that slowed the drive of the story", deepening and expanding some aspects of the plot, bringing the two novels more in line with each other, and making a slight but important adjustment to the character of Estella Winterbine - which affects the last couple of chapters. There is no change to the basic story.

An important adjustment has been to the "Catholic" content. In the end I agreed with those who claimed that the "Catholic" content sounded too much like preaching and would turn off those who have no sympathy with the Catholic Church and its teaching. In fact, some readers told me bluntly they dropped the first book for this reason. My intention was not to preach but to present the Church as it actually is and not the monstrous organisation that features in many novels these days. Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is just the best known of a genre whose main aim seems to be vilifying all things Catholic. In any case, the Catholic content in my two books is far less obtrusive and (I hope) appears for the most part in its functional role.

The first editions of the books are no longer available - the stock has been pulped. I am in the process of presenting the revised manuscripts to literary agents. If there is no joy there, I will make them available as e-books on my website. The third book in the Winterbine Trilogy will be another 12-18 months in the writing.

The comments will resume on my website.