When I completed the first draft of Book 1 of this series in the Spring of 2018, I immediately sent it in ebook form to a couple of dozen friends.
That was a mistake. It was a mistake for 2 reasons:
1. Friends are not the correct people to ask to be reviewers. They often are unwilling to tell you what you need to hear (one lady friend flat-out refused to review it, her comment was “I do not want to destroy our friendship”).
2. As Terry Pratchett once observed, the first draft of a novel is merely you telling yourself the story. That is a long way from having a finished novel, where you tell the story to others.
Using that old military technique of 20:20 hindsight, the first draft was nowhere near good enough, for a whole bunch of reasons. That much was obvious from the fragmented feedback that I did receive, plus I took a year out and then read it again. (You wince when you find the clunkers in structure and plot, believe me).
By November this year, I will have a significantly revised draft ready.
I am looking for beta readers to read and review this draft. It will still not be perfect. Realistically, works of art are never finished, they are abandoned. I want to publish the book in Q1 2022, so I do not want to spend months polishing it. However, beta readers have a better chance of spotting significant flaws than I do.
So, if you want to be a beta reader, please contact me via the Contact form on this site, or via my email account, or DM me on Twitter. You will receive a signed copy of the published book in print-to-order form when it is published.