Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! This is my third stab at this blog. I’ve missed weekly deadlines as a result. Originality warning! There isn’t any here, but I wanted to say it anyway. The world is a complex place. We are complex creatures. But we delight in reducing the complex to the simple, …
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! The front cover is finalized, with paperback and hardback layouts to come. The formatting corrections are in process. I have been brave and put The Killer and The Dead up for review on BookSirens. This is part of my time to embrace new aspects of book business, and …
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! It has been a week since last I blogged. A long week, filled with nonsense, and not the fun kind that Alice had to deal with. Part of the reason I am not a book business person is I loathe dealing with bureaucracy, with paperwork, with checklists and …
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! Another week flies by. The Killer and the Dead is now on sale: if this book belongs to any month, it’s October! (In lands that make note of Hallowe’en, or have October as the prelude to Day of the Dead at the start of November.) This week I …
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! 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 …
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 …
Roderick T. Macdonald 