Updates —

PURE MAGIC

I think all the issues with doing CreateSpace for PURE MAGIC have been resolved at last. Yesterday I simply could not figure out how to get the minimum price to be something reasonable. It was saying $42, which was plainly insane, but no changes I put in ever made a difference. Finally I emailed the CreateSpace people and found out I had accidentally selected “full color” for the book interior, I guess like it was an art book or something. Switching to black-and-white fixed the issue. Finally!

Now the book has to once again go through their review process. However, that shouldn’t take more than 24 hours. I bet they’re going to offer me another proof copy and I do wonder if the reason the price of the first proof copy was so high because of the full color thing? Because I have heard it shouldn’t be so high. However, I don’t believe I need a second proof copy. I know what needed to be fixed, it’s fixed, it looks like all the pages are in the right place in the online review copy, I’m honestly pretty sure it’s fine the way it is.

So, provided nothing else comes up, I believe I will be able to hit Go and release the paper edition into the wild some time this week, hopefully tomorrow.

THE WHITE ROAD

Moving forward, but it’s a little slower than I would like. It turns out that I have some distracting stuff going on right now that is preventing me from working on it as much as I would like, and also preventing me from falling into it and getting absorbed in working on it. You remember that post about working in the flow that Naomi Novik wrote a little while ago? Yeah, not there at the moment. In a few weeks, life should get less distracting, though. Probably.

I’m departing somewhat from the synopsis I sent my editor, and I can see that in a little while I will probably be departing a LOT from the synopsis, but I’m pretty sure she will not be surprised.

More annoyingly, I feel like I’m overwriting and will need to cut a good bit of the last 100 pages. That could happen, it’s happened before, and it’s such a pain. On the other hand, I’ve been wrong about that feeling before, too, so maybe I’ll wind up deciding the recent work mostly stays in the book.

THE KEEPER OF THE MIST

So, I got the ARCs before I got the galley proofs. I can’t remember if that usually happens, but it seems odd. Anyway, the proofs arrived, and as my editor warned me, the proofreader is the most diligent in the entire world. She marked up all but half a dozen pages. Then my editor went through and did stuff, and so did someone else, so I had three sets of marks to evaluate. This took time, but on the other hand, flow has nothing to do with working on page proofs. I can do that even if I’m distracted and somewhat stressed by other things, and I did, so off the proofs went yesterday.

In general I am inclined to accept the proofreader’s changes, incidentally. Not all the time, but in general. Often I decide that even though I put that dash or semicolon in for a reason, FINE, it can change. Other times I’m like, no, sorry, I know the rule and this is me breaking it on purpose. Stet.

More important are those moments when the proofreader catches a character opening her eyes when she hadn’t closed them in the first place, or pointing out that it’s strange that it’s afternoon when just two pages back it was evening, or whatever. Thank heaven for proofreaders.

I am relieved to note that I quite like MIST. Always a nice feeling.

LIFE

Good heavens, enough with the sauna. Can we please have the humidity drop about thirty percent? And preferably the temperature drop a bit, too? This is awful. And the mosquitoes! Aargh! I’m sure the flycatchers and bats are happy, but the rest of us, not so much.