Paksworld

Editor’s revision letter has now joined Agent’s revision comments and I am vanishing into the depths of Crown to work on the first level of revision, the deep structural, or foundation…and then the connection between that and the top level (some rooms, as mentioned before, are being added to the whole)…and then the top or finish level.  Read the rest of this entry »

The first week out is the week that determines (nearly always) whether a book will reach “bestseller” status.     It’s the week that agents watch over,  checking BookScan numbers regularly, checking rankings any place they can find one and making their own calculations of raw numbers v. other books’ raw numbers.   In the first week,  LIMITS sold a few fewer hardcovers than ECHOES, and a few more e-books, to wind up with a modest increase of total hardcover/ebook sales in the US market.   So thank you, all of you who wanted to and were able to buy a copy  in the first week.    Thanks for talking about the books, and introducing others to them.   You’re the ones who keep a writer in bread & butter (and dark chocolate.  Can’t forget the dark chocolate.)    Read the rest of this entry »

So today, the nitpicking round it is ongoing, and it’s…always interesting.   Nitpicking has various uses.  One of them can be shortening a book that’s too long (too long defined by publishing economics.)   I think I’ve posted before about some of the shortening strategies.   But this book isn’t too long, so nitpicking is aimed at other goals.   Tyops of course, like that one right there.   Not just letter reversals and misspelled words, but words mistakenly typed in place of others.  “Heard” for “herd.”    “Policed” for “pleased.”  (Don’t ask how I did that one…I don’t know.   Brain burp.  It wasn’t in this book.)   Anything that sticks out as awkward, bothersome, annoying, confusing.   For instance:

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Editor has approved the title for Book V:  Crown of Renewal.    Scheduled to release late May 2014, though that’s always subject to change .   You will soon notice that title as a category (like, um, for this post.)

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Agent had some worthwhile comments on Book IV which sent it back to me for more work.   This will result in an added chapter early in the book and the “perking up” (my term, not Agent’s)  of some fairly large chunks considered “flat” as well as showing one character more active and tough than before (hadn’t realized that character had softened that much between books.)     Some of that will involve shortening, and some will involve lengthening, as usual.   Agent has contacted Editor, who gave permission for an extension to do the work he suggested, pointing out that we could send her the version I sent him today, or a better version in ten days.  (Agent has had the book since January 20 and I appreciate the fast, analytical reading Agent gave it. )

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Chapter numbers.   Chapter numbers don’t go on until I’m sure all the chapters are there, in the right order (OK, MOSTLY sure.)    Before that, chapters have a title, such as “Chapter: Kieri & Elves Talk History” (not actual title.)  That way I can use a search on “Chapter” to find the beginnings of chapters, and the title tells me if I have the one I want.  Chapter numbers change during the writing, as I may be off-chronology.    Chapters are numbered now, all forty-one of them.

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Some of you know the nonsense song, and some of you don’t, but in terms of finishing this book…I found the elusive duplication, removed the elusive duplication, put the single copy in a better place in the sequence, and…then found the elusive sequence gap that I knew was in there somewhere and filled it.   Progress returned to normal for a time, with only top-level fine-polishing to do.

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Writer emerges from the undergrowth, stained and ragged and wild-eyed from having taken “the short cut” to getting this thing in order.   Taking it down to be printed somewhere else never happened, due to Lifestuff.    So Writer elected to do it all in the machine (the printer is not happy about churning out lots of pages in a hurry.  Some pages in a hurry, fine.  800+ pages in a hurry…not fine.)   Writer then looked at the mass of thick, impenetrable brush in front of her and spotted what looked like a short-cut game trail.   And plunged in.

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Rotten no-good cold or no rotten no-good cold, I still should finish (or nearly finish) the main draft of the new book by Oct 1, and within a week of that should have it roughly in order.  (It’s not now, because of the various medical interruptions–to keep going, I wrote in whatever part of the story cooperated that day, so it’s added branches to its trunk fairly randomly. )

So:   I will need some alpha readers who are strong on the structural side (the nit-picking comes later.)  The rough sort I’ll do to get this out to people may not be accurate.     Given my aging memory, I can’t recall who, exactly, was on the last couple of alpha-reader lists (which I’ve misplaced, you see…DUH) so if you want to trudge through 160,000 (roughly) words of  very unfinished manuscript setting a trail for revision to follow, contact me by email.   There will be the usual “makes the publisher happy” agreements not to reveal anything prematurely to deal with.

Thanks, and I’m off to get from 156,300 to 160,000+ as fast as I can.

The morning began with the discovery (not unexpected by me!) that the dozen or so ants on the counter yesterday had become a superhighway of ants along the edge of the counter, up the wall, and into one of the cabinets.  They had also constructed a network of smaller routes on the counter itself.  Some of them had crossed the Great Chasm between counter and stove top, with the result that the sugar bowl (these are sugar ants, much to be preferred if you must have ants) had ants in it.

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