The final draft has now been completed and read, with comments. I’ve incorporated all of the comments and corrections that I can. Mrs D was invaluable, as always in this process.
It seems the scene in the Jobcentre is simply (and technically) wrong in how those places work, but as the scene covers some things I wanted to include and is otherwise not referred to again, I decided to stick with it.
I’ve now sent a copy of the book off for a completely independent read, by a gentleman in the US who kindly offered to do that, so now I’m just waiting for the results of that to come back. Depending on what he says I should hopefully be able to publish fairly soon after that.
I’ve changed the title of the piece to be ‘Luck is a Leprechaun.’ It still isn’t quite what I wanted, but as I don’t actually know what that would be it’s looking likely that we have a final title.
While I’m waiting for Luck is a Leprechaun to be finalised I’ve actually started on a new work, set in the 19th Century and featuring a Detective Inspector in a smallish cotton town. It’s intended to be a science-fiction tale working on the theme of how would the Victorians deal with an alien invasion (on a small scale). the working title is ‘Unwelcome Visitors.’