I got back the beta read of A Dislocated World (the World War II letters). It’s interesting because the questions simply aren’t that different than the questions for Trials: What’s an APO? Why doesn’t he know whether or not he needs to pay income tax? Is the Maine unit in Maine?
It really brings home something I realized in journalism school, which is that nonfictional stories and fictional stories are both stories, and should be treated as such. (This concept is really important to the movie Big Fish, and is a big part of why I liked it so much.) There is some essay, which of course I can’t find now, where a writer points out that, although science fiction is known for its world building, a problem with a lot of novels in other genres is that they don’t bother to do any world building when it would really enrich the book.
And a big part of the editing I’m doing with this nonfiction, historical book is world building. Nobody knows what the hell the ETO is anymore, nor how it differs from the CBI or the POA—you have to explain all that. You have to build this nonfiction, historical world, otherwise these letters won’t make any sense.
What else? The copy editor is available! Yay!