By way of an addendum to my last post: I re-read the chunk of the story that I shared on here and hated it - way too much backstory shovelled into too small a space of story. On the other hand, I re-read my earlier drafts of chapters 1 and 2 and thought they were much better (and couldn't understand why I wanted to re-write them). I've gathered together the earlier drafts of chapters 1-6 and put them into one document to be read through and edited. No doubt problems will come to light when they're examined in detail.
Completely unrelated: while looking at the Twinkl website last week I came across a position for a full-time illustrator, but it's based in Sheffield. A proper illustrating job is tempting, but I don't want to move to Sheffield.