Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! So a few weeks ago I’d finished again. Well, now I’ve started again. This is not editing hell. Exactly. But I have felt moved to fix some detail work. I decided to remove all sets of parentheses (there were three), and will give $15 to the first person …
Category: Updates
Fourteen blurbs and some physical procrastination
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Fourteen versions and a few fragments later, I have something approaching a reasonable blurb for the book. It is not deliberately seeded with search optimization friendly phrases. I’ll look and see what can be ‘subtly’ added. Perhaps. I wonder, given the evolution of search engines, what the latest …
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Finished Again. The to do list before publication begins.
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Guess what? I’ve finished my book again! Yes folks, I completed my proofing read through today. I can’t lie, I changed the odd sentence here and there, and some physical descriptions for clarity. I still have a few notes to clarify, 14 to be specific, (been there before, …
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Finances and fitness: it’s not a sprint
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! This week finds me breaking out of one funk, and cognizant of another. First, I have been doing a close reading of the manuscript, and have been noticing the little things that need to be addressed: small fixes for flow. Read 90 pages today, found one misplaced ‘and’ …
Justified and Ancient
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Notes from the week. Fallout Spoilers below in #2. I am back on track, faced my fear and read my manuscript again. I can totally sympathize with the writers of yesteryear who threw away or burned entire books after deciding them to be trash, but I think the …
I’ll think of a title later… (The Procrastinator’s Credo)
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! This has been a week either of failure, or of tremendously successful procrastination. I can’t lie, I have done not a thing on the book. I opened the file a few times and glanced at the legend ‘Chapter 1’, but then looked away. Why? Well, last week I …
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Reading aloud to the Demon of Perfectionism
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Okay, so the copy edit is complete. One more hill climbed, another mountain ahead. I have started the read aloud proofing pass, and am 5.5 to 7% of the way through that, depending on criteria chosen. No graphical representation employed. So far I have added and removed equal …
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Halo: Mystery Box Edition (And my books are on Sale – Buy them!)
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! 97% of copy edit complete. Two things this week. One, as of today both my books are on sale in the UK and USA, in the ebook edition anyway. Continue your recovery from St. Patrick’s day overindulgence by sitting down with a good book. That’s an order, soldier! …
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Obscure words and stones in shoes
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Almost there! I am 91.6% or 93.2% of the way through the copy edit, depending on criteria used. Hopefully next weekend it will be done, and on to proofing. This week I discovered I used word in an unusual fashion. I used ‘bulled’ as a verb, to indicate …
Dune 2 and the difficulty of story execution
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Progress continues with the copy edit now 80-85% of the way there, depending on the criteria used. Finish line in sight. Reread and proofing remain. I saw Dune 2 this afternoon. No spoilers, but I feel a little let down by it, after loving the first film. There …
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Roderick T. Macdonald 