The Official Essex Sisters Companion Guide by Jody Gayle with Eloisa James Read Free Book Online

understand about chaperones, and reputations, and the importance of wearing the right clothing?
                                 When they finally arrived at their destination, there was no outward sign that Holbrook Court was occupied by a duke mad enough about horses to trade the care of four young women for a thoroughbred mare. It was a huge old rambling pile of a manor, probably built in the days of Queen Elizabeth, to Tess’s untutored eye.
                                 One thing she noticed immediately was that the mansion was glowing with light. Virtually every window was blazing. That had to mean that the duke’s purse was made of a finer silk than their papa’s. Lord knows, when the races were going badly, there’d been plenty a night when they’d eaten their evening meal by the light of bulrushes.
    As I mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, my editor and I really only had a disagreement about the last nineteen chapters of Kiss Me, Annabel . I was pretty early in my career in those days, and I didn’t fight very hard for my own story, which I regret now. I still remember getting the phone call, which sent me into a tailspin of despair. My editor had problems with the second half. In fact, she didn’t like where the novel was going at all—and the change she requested needed an entirely different focus and a new plot.
    I gnashed my teeth and cried and ate a lot of chocolate, but finally I sat down and rewrote the book. I do love the book as it was published. I’m offering the alternate ending with the proviso that it exists only in an unedited manuscript. The pages you’ll find in the Appendix are my very first draft and first thoughts.
    Please do not, under any circumstances, read those pages before you read Kiss Me, Annabel .
    Copyediting a Manuscript
    So now we’re at the point in a book’s life when it goes to the copy editor. As it happens, I was able to find the copy editor’s queries. This particular copy editor put a long note on the front.
    I recognize this is a well-written book, and the changes I made were not done routinely, but with an eye toward improving a solid manuscript. I hope Eloisa takes my changes in that spirit. I have divided them into categories.
    His categories were all rather arcane. A few times he didn’t like my use of an “implied point of view,” which is when a character refers to herself. He had quite a bit to say about the rhythm of dialogue, as in: “if this rhythm were breached by having the same character in successive paragraphs that might momentarily puzzle the reader and/or force them to double back.”
    I am almost always grateful to copy editors. Their sharp eyes for grammar and spelling make novels legible. I can edit and edit and look straight past an obvious typo. I feel this even more strongly now that self-published books are such a strong part of the market; I have read wonderful stories that were marred by grammar problems. Some copy editors do go over the top, and I think the question of whether the rhythm of dialogue is “breached” is a bridge too far.

When the Manuscript Is Finished
    I would love to be able to reproduce the series of changes that each book cover went through on its journey of a final cover, but that’s impossible as the images are actually copyrighted to the artist. There is a funny story behind The Taming of the Duke ’s cover, though. The initial painting—this was before Photoshop was widely used for covers—showed the hero standing with his head bent, stark naked, his hands cupped over his privates. What’s more, this was supposedly a depiction of Rafe—the first hero I’ve ever created who started the series with a bit of a pot belly! The model, on the other hand, had a whopping six-pack.
    I have what’s called “cover approval,” so I nixed that version. I’m a Shakespeare professor; I have to be able to keep my head up in class. The artist then painted a