WHEW, THAT’S DONE plus puppy pictures

Okay! Just loaded the final version of No Foreign Sky into KDP, and wow, am I glad to be done with endless proofing.

Linda S. was the last proofreader. She found plenty of typos that everyone else missed (this always happens; everyone always finds unique typos). How many had I already caught via reading the book on my phone? About 2/3. That leaves maybe twenty typos that I missed, so that would have been a LOT. Thus we see that truly, it is impossible for the author to catch every single typo herself. Even reading it in three different formats! Multiple times!

I hope there are zero typos left, but no doubt there are a couple. As always, if anybody spots any, please let me know.

How much actual revision happened at the last minute? A little. Every now and then I would read one of Linda’s comments OR have a brand new thought about a scene myself and therefore I would wind up revising a few paragraphs here and there. This takes longer than just turning “had” to “has” but of course it’s far less tedious. Makes a nice break from straight-up proofing.

But it is now finished, the final version is loaded, and I am not going to look at again until the release date. Whew!

Next: I need to create a new paperback file. The slightly less annoying way to do this is to delete most of each chapter from the previous paperback file and then paste in each revised chapter in turn from the kindle file. There are 23 chapters plus an epilogue. This will take maybe 20 to 30 minutes, but it is the sort of task that feels endless.

THEN I WILL BE DONE.

Although I would like to write both a sequel and a prequel to this book in the near-ish future, that doesn’t mean this year. By next year or the year after that, I will have recovered from the endless revision and proofing of this manuscript and I will be much more in the mood to continue with this universe, which does definitely have room to expand.

Switching from universe to universe is definitely a useful technique for staying motivated, at least for me.

Meanwhile! I introduced the big puppies to the little puppies this morning. Much cuteness ensued. I will show you the initial introduction, which is both cute and revelatory.

See how the big Blenheim puppy has his tail way up, right up over his back? That is not the correct tail carriage in this breed. You know why his tail is like that? Because he is up on his toes, strutting. He is posturing and declaring that he is The Greatest! The little puppies should be awed by his utter magnificence. This is a fine attitude for a show dog. But he’s going to bully the little ones if not prevented. (I am preventing that.) The tricolor puppy, do you see his tail is not up like that? He is a MUCH gentler puppy. He might possibly be able to play unsupervised with the little ones, though I don’t plan to permit that. It’s stunning how clear their personalities have become in the past couple weeks, especially considering that just three weeks ago, they basically didn’t have personalities at all.

Here is the big Blenheim again, meeting a little one nose to nose. I have at this point corrected him for climbing on and crushing the little ones. He is still confident, but he is also thinking a bit at this point. His brain has turned on. He is more aware that some kinds of interaction may be a problem. If you consistently prevent bullying, that can nip that kind of problem right off at the beginning, so we’ll see. It does help that Cavaliers are usually gentle by nature. Magnificent as he is, probably he will be willing to play nicely with relatively little direction. But I wouldn’t leave him with them in uncontrolled circumstances. Especially as he is a Sumo wrestler of a puppy — fat and heavy and just way, way more than the little ones can deal with.