One more step on the road to an actual book.
Don’t forget to check out “Notes from the 2078 United Nations Antarctic Archaeological Survey” and “Tour of Duty” (from COVENANTS) for more adventures in this universe!
Had to tighten up a fight scene, which was fair. Too much philosophy, not enough fighting with a madman in an alley. Also, we found a place where I should have used a colon! Alas, I rewrote that sentence anyway when redoing the fight scene. Such is life.
In other news, I’m about to contact my dude about the GHOSTS ON AN ALIEN WIND cover. It is time.
The editor hasn’t thrown the book at my head yet, which is a positive sign. Also: my brain hurts. Actually doing the edits is, like, mental exercise that I haven’t been doing for the last few months. It’s gonna take a few days to get myself back up to speed. On the other hand, I feel fairly better. Doing useful work is an anodyne to weariness of the spirit.
On the gripping hand: I am still committing war crimes against semicolons. Poor editor. Poor, poor editor.
Regrettably, I have to bump prices on the print version because of increased paper and manufacturing costs. I’m keeping the e-version of GHOSTS ON AN ALIEN WIND at the regular price, because the costs didn’t go up as much and I want more copies sold. I’m also going to be experimenting with B&N for this book, so it won’t be on Kindle Unlimited. Kindle yes; KU no.
Nah, I’m not real happy about raising prices, either – but what can you do? Inflation is a real pain that way. At least I can still charge less than the big publishers and still be competitive.
#commissionearned
Note that I say nothing about the existing edits. One step at a time, my friends. One step at a time. However, since I now have a good idea of word count, I can calculate a close enough pagecount for GHOSTS ON AN ALIEN WIND for my book cover dude. That is a very good thing.
While you’re waiting, why not buy some of my books? There’s a story from this universe in COVENANTS.
General tightening and getting people’s motivations down and whatnot. Also seeing continuity errors on my own, but that’s to be expected. I’ve yet to write a book that didn’t have at least one major mistake in the first draft. From what I can tell, nobody can.
GHOSTS ON AN ALIEN WIND remains on track, as such things go.
I am still way behind, but less so than before. It’s been a wacky few months, let me tell you. But now that the first hunk is off, maybe I can get a handle on the rest…
If you volunteered, you should have gotten your email. If you did but you didn’t, let me know. …It’s very strange, not having that book hanging over my head for the moment. There’s nothing to be done about it, for right now! I can do nothing at the present time.
Ain’t gonna lie: it feels weird.
That’s about half the book, thank goodness. If I buckle down on it, I can get the revised text to the readers by Friday or Sunday. If you’ve volunteered for that and haven’t heard from me by now, I regret to say that it’s because I haven’t gotten off of my butt yet and emailed anybody back. Flogging myself back into action is one of the things I’m working on, this week.
#commissionearned
Got through the first three chapters of GHOSTS ON AN ALIEN WIND already, which involved breaking up a fourth chapter, then redistributing it. I’m going to be working on this today and tomorrow, but since I’ll be more or less taking the weekend off for family-related stuff, I need to seriously buckle down to it.
If you’re interested in being a reader, let me know: unfortunately, there’s a pretty hard deadline on this one. I need to get this book in the hands of my editor by July 1st. That’s on me, I know.
