Blood Feud

Happy to report that Blood Feud is well on in the editing stakes. Chapter Nine is currently getting the treatment! This is after it has been through a sharp-eyed critique group, and first read through by me, a rest of several weeks and then a second read through. Now I'm printing out a chapter at a time, reading it, making corrections....Maybe then I'll consider it OK to self-publish. OTOH, I'll need to check chapter headings are all the same, that the font doesn't vary, all those sort of technical little things that catch you out. Well, they catch me out, especially when I put something on Facebook.

I'm working on a cover, too. Not entirely happy with what I have. May start again.

The story is set in 1046  AD and these are the opening lines:

‘Thor’s teeth!’ Flane hammered his fist on the mast and gazed at the sky. Above the thatched roofs and smoking fires of Dyflin’s thousand-strong Viking community, the sky was so blue it hurt the eyes. Good sailing weather going to waste. If Oli didn’t move faster than a sick snail, they’d have to wait half a day for the next high tide to take them safely over the sand bars in the estuary. That meant yet another night in Dyflin, and more opportunity for the crew to get into trouble.

A blur of colour and movement caught his eye. Curious, he squinted through the tracery of masts and ropes that blocked his view. A small figure ran heedlessly fast along the wharf. Her fists hiked her skirt out from beneath her feet as she dodged loaded carts and leapt over creels and coils of rope in her path. Long hair, glinting gold in the sunlight, streamed out behind her. She darted towards a ship, veered away and ran toward the end of the wharf where he stood on the Sea Bird.

‘Oh, Christ, no!’ Flane swore under his breath. He was not mistaken; the girl headed straight for him.

The first cover is maybe not clear enough, though I like it. I have just this minute realised that the second cover reminds me of that iconic photo of Nessie the Loch Ness Monster done around 1933, so maybe that would work against it. What do you think?