Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! I have had two full strength coffees. I should be powered up beyond belief. But I ate two grotesquely sugared cookies (I was sugar free for about 5 months this year and fell off the wagon just before Hallowe’en, not a good time to give in to temptation! …
Continue reading Jazzed to Sluggishly Meet you, My dear Boswell.
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! I hope you have had a great week. Mine was good, if littered with snowy commutes of which I am not fond. Experiments in marketing go on. Self-education on many fronts continue to be delayed, which is a little depressing because I keep adding things to the pile …
Continue reading Plans for the Future, and Religion in Fantasy
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Front cover is finalized. Paperback and hardback covers are underway. Formatting proceeds, and once that and the print covers are complete I will have a book ready to go. So hopefully all will be in place by the end of this month. Fingers crossed, but monkeys armed with …
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Third version of cover has been seen. Close, so close. I have proofed the formatting in the book version of the manuscript. Twenty seven changes later it is complete. Should have been fewer, I know. There were a few hiccups I think I could go back to… but …
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! I have improved my day to day constructiveness this weekend. At the cost of learning Scots. I’ll take it, for now. In perusing the internet (never advisable) I have discovered I am the worst indie author ever (by elimination), because I first published 7 years ago and have …
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! How many times can a book be finished? Many many times. Given that, I have finished making the final proofing corrections. So from my perspective the book is done. I will still read it again, because the last thing I did was a specific word check, and as …
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Final proofing progress now 63%. Getting there. This meant sadly that my self-directed learning has slowed considerably, but hey ho, progress on the book comes first. I did find time to flesh out some more ideas for the next book, writing down what has been percolating in my …
Continue reading The Distraction of Ideas and the Need for Careful Construction
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! I have recently experienced an epiphany. I’ve always written fantasy. Soon # 3 will be out, (my proof of a printed version is complete, and many benefits to the text have been obtained by that tactile appraisal of the text) and again, like the first two I have …
Continue reading Finding Voice in a Language Neglected: the Long Road Towards Mastery of Scots
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! I did not remain in editing hell, my friends, though I am grateful I visited, because I fixed two small issues that came out on the multiple repeated passes I made as I chased some words and phrases through the text. In short controlled bursts. One would have …
Continue reading Escape Velocity Achieved, New World Sighted.
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! It was just a couple of things, honest. I have opened the door to editing hell. I was just checking where the eyes were, none glued to anything inappropriate in the text, as can sometimes happen. I checked because I was reminded of Don McNair’s book on Editor-proofing …
Roderick T. Macdonald 