I had a nearly 2-hour phone conversation with an old friend of mine tonight. He was the second person, following
@Zero Esc to edit the manuscript for my new book. He finished the edits this week and wanted to discuss them. He really went above and beyond the call of duty, too. (Heh, duty.) He actually printed out a copy and wrote all the edits and notes in pen, using three different colours, which indicate errors, strongly suggested corrections, and comments.
Overall, he felt it was "Shorter, easier to read, easier to follow, better pacing, fewer errors, less bizarre phrasing, funnier, just better-written overall." I imagine the fewer errors and less bizarre phrasing was partly thanks to Zero_Esc, but I felt the book was better written this time around, too.
Now he's snail-mailing the edited manuscript for me to pour through.
Overall, the things he discussed were minor changes at best. Some cuts and sentence merging. Syntax or awkward phrasing corrections. Word choice changes. There were two relatively big things that he suggested changing. At the most, they'll change the writing on two key sections near the end, but it wouldn't be anything that would require
major rewrites. I'm still thinking about these two suggestions, because they change two pretty big things. The biggest one is in the final chapter and how one character says their goodbye and where they go from there. But the change makes sense. It's just a matter of how I want to approach it.
But yeah, overall, it's good to hear that the feedback I'm getting has been largely positive. Of the few people that have read it so far (less than half a dozen), they've all said the writing was better in some way or another. I'm hoping that'll translate well to more sales and getting the word out on my trigger-happy mutant armadillo.