good news re Queen of Swords

Today I heard through my agent that my publisher has read Queen of Swords and she is ecstatic about it. You know what a relief this is?

Two years of working on a novel, close to 300,000 words, dozens of characters and many complex interwoven plot lines and by the time you’re done, you have no sense of the thing at all. Is it good? Is it bad? At this stage I always think of an old George Carlin sketch about cleaning out the refrigerator and finding unidentifiable stuff… is it meat? is it cake? It’s meat-cake!

The publisher said (this is heresay, of course) that QS was the best thing she’s ready in a very long time. Okay. Now I can go look at it without anxiety spasms. Whether y’all agree with her is another (and bigger) hurdle — but for the moment, I feel like I’ve given birth to a baby who has turned out to be healthy in spite of many troubles and complications along the way.