Candice: A while ago a friend of mine gave me a synopsis of an idea they’d had floating around in their head. She professed to not having time to write it, but would I have a look and see if I thought it was worth exploring.
My view, any idea is worth exploring, and it sounded interesting to me, so I said go for it.
A few weeks ago she contacted me with a first draft, asking for my thoughts. She’d asked me because I had experience in this area and was a ‘professional’ writer. Well, if the cap fits…
Reading someone else’s work is always hard. I know that Phil and I struggled the first time we handed out pristine copies of book one. We thought it was great, but we actually lost a few friends over some of the feedback. So I gulped and dove in.
I’m not going to say much on my thoughts, I need to give them back to the author first. But I can instantly some of the pitfalls that Phil and I fell in to when we did the first draft of book one. And I can also see how much we have grown since we wrote the first Kate vs book. The fact that I can see these things straight off shows we’ve learnt something. We hope that is demonstrated with the feedback that we are getting on Book two, ie not a lot.
So, I shall carefully point out her where she can make things better and hope that she has another bash at something that is shaping into a good story.
But also go off and think about our marketing plan for Book two… more of that next week.
nolanparker 
Handing over your first novel nervously to others is a common problem. Interesting post here from someone who just wanted to see if he could crank out enough words, but went on to be a successful writer: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2017/07/21/agent-to-the-stars-20-years-on/