Smile, smile, smile.

I'm about to start the first big edit of the second in The Lilean Chronicles series.  While mother was here with me over Christmas I read it to her, to get her views on the story and although she loves it and says she thinks it's better than the first book, we did find something that quickly became a source of some hilarity.  I seem to have used the word 'smile' far too often during dialogue - "hello," he smiled - "of course," she smiled, etc.  It seems that all my characters smile far too damn often and removal of many of the smiles is the biggest task of this first edit.