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Editing, rehearsing and getting things in place

Sneak preview of this year’s cover. See the whole thing after the break.

June and halfway to Christmas already. Really ought to be getting Christmas story stuff in order.

Which, fortunately, I am, entirely due to the help of others, namely Rowan, Jon and Jamie. This all means that the story is now edited, polished and ready to start recording. Oh, and we have a cover illustration - which I’ll share with you at the end of this email.

First of all, the editing. I am extremely fortunate in that Rowan (my other half) is not just a great editor - as she proves when she edits my pieces for The Metropolitan, turning my half formed ideas into actual articles - but also a terrific copy editor. This means she has hacked through my rambling prose with a machete, tidying up the overgrown sentences and sprinkling about helpful punctuation.

Most of all though, she’s a really helpful first reader. This year, for example, she found a weak section that I already knew was weak but hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself. Largely because I knew it would take work to fix. She, though, was able to articulate why isn’t wasn’t working and then give me the idea that helped fix it.

Also, it’s worth saying, she says its the best Christmas story yet, which is also extremely encouraging, to say the least.

And that means we’re ready to start recording.