4/4 The full developmental edit is the most expensive but also comes in different price tiers. All prices are lower than standard EFA rates.

Genres: adult SF/F/H, historical, thriller & literary. I've also worked on romance and memoir.

Email: karen@indiecateditorial.com
indiecateditorial.com

Manuscript critiques come in three price tiers, starting with the more basic assessment. This will identify the biggest issues while ignoring the rest. The other two MS critiques go into more detail. Delivery is one to three weeks depending on book length and tier.

3/

Want a detailed developmental report and margin comments on your first 10,000 words? And delivered in five days? The price is £180.

Outline critique with report and margin comments is another service. I've worked on outlines up to 20,000.

2/

Fun fact: Maxim was originally supposed to be Henry. Doesn't have the same ring somehow.

I recommend Margaret Forster's biography on Daphne, and there is also The Rebecca Notebook.

17/17

Daphne's study of jealousy, the differences in social standing between Maxim and his second wife, and other themes were simply ignored. But she made a lot of money and the book went on to become a 20th century classic.

16/

Since Daphne had thought the book quite grim, she was genuinely surprised by its success. In the US, it was compared by some reviewers to Jane Eyre, if only as an inferior version.

15/

She thought Maxim did not treat the narrator well & that calling it a romance was not exactly in line with what happens. She thought it was more a study in jealousy, and that there was more hate than love in it.

14/

But when Gollancz handed it to a reader, the report was positive, and Gollancz agreed when he read the manuscript himself. One conundrum for Daphne was how some other people saw and described the novel.

13/

Finally, once she was back in England with her husband, she was able to complete the book and sent it to Gollancz. She wrote 'I've tried to get an atmosphere of suspense... the ending is a bit brief and a bit grim.' She did not see it as a likely success.

12/

Daphne's own inadequacies when it came to running servants and a household and her shyness and lack of confidence also worked their way into the novel, taking it beyond the original simple idea of one dead wife haunting the current wife.

11/

She anticipated a tragedy looming, but at this point hadn't worked out what it would be. She still missed Cornwall and daydreamed about it a lot, and this finds its way into the book itself. The novel even opens on a dream and the heroine often imagines things.

10/

'...very roughly the book will be about the influence of a first wife on a second... she is dead before the book opens. Little by little I want to build up the character of the first in the mind of the second... until wife 2 is haunted day and night....'

9/