Tag: Editors

Ready or Not getting even closer!

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Ready or Not (concept only)At the extraordinary risk of causing fate to set my editor’s computer on fire I will say that the final editing is going phenomenally!

I’d love to say ‘as of <dd’ Month> you can pre-order and it’ll launch on <dd” Month>, but I can’t.  Not yet.

Thing is, if the book continues to need nothing more than repairing my lovely typographical errors and tidying up my idiosyncratic approach to punctuation and capitalisation then the book could potentially be through with editing by the end of this month, meaning I could announce the opening of pre-orders for 01 April, and release on Easter.  How cool is that?!

However it is entirely too early to have strict confidence in that possibility.  I won’t have the necessary certainty, I imagine, until I see what date the book is at its half-way point.

All told I don’t think (barring Murphy’s Law invoking itself and a meteor falling on my editor and her computer, landing her in a comatose state for several months in hospital …) there’ll be much reason to doubt a May release with an April start to pre-orders.  Cross fingers, pray, offer sacrifices (fruits, nuts, bread/cakes, whiskey, a portion of an animal you already planned to dine upon not the other sort please!!), wear your lucky socks … whatever works for you.

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How embarrassing

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Ever do something, then look back over it later and go “what in God’s name was I thinking?!“

Yeah, I had one of those moments.

Maybe you recall the end of this summer where I did my Now & Forever A-B-Cs series?  If not, I think I might be grateful …

By and large it’s fine.  Not always exceptionally well written, but it was just a bit of fun, so who cares?  Still, it was meant to be accurate, and that … not always so much.  More than not, if I want to be honest with myself, but still enough to bother me and my perfectionist nature (just as I cringe every time I re-read Love or Lust and discover a new typo or mistake I missed, not to worry, as soon as my editor and I have  a chance those will be fixed, and by the magic of ebooks you will all have a corrected copy).  I get a few people’s birthdays terribly wrong, mostly.

I know it isn’t important.  I know it shouldn’t matter.  Certainly I understand this well enough I’m not bothering to delete those posts.  I should, eventually, go back and edit them … but I’ve more pressing things to do, like the continuing work on Ready or Not.  Suffice to say, blogposts probably are not a good source of solid cannon — I may be making them at 2AM and off the cuff;  blog pages and the books should be safe, those I’m wont to take more time with.

Speaking of Ready or Not, my editor thinks we may be able to have it ready to ship as early as Easter!  Worst case, she says, it ought to be around the first anniversary of Love or Lust‘s release.  We wait and see.  I’m still terribly nervous, especially of the bits I wrote during NaNoWriMo and CampWriMo.  I will say this, however, while I would rather release one or more of the Now & Forever books each year (I’d have put the entire series out at one time if I’d had it all written!), but if a book isn’t ready it isn’t ready and I won’t release it.  I hope my readers will understand.

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Status update: Ready or Not

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Well, Love or Lust is holding strong as an Amazon bestseller and hot new release (for category, but hey — it is a bestseller list — says so on the label).  Which is lovely.  Even climbing charts globally.  A ping on the German radar and some love from Down Under hath come my way as well — thank you.

In the meantime I’ve got back to work on Ready or Not and am nearly half through it.  So far it’s not quite the disaster I was thinking, but I also don’t think I’ve hit the bits I wrote during NaNoWriMo or Camp NaNoWriMo.

I’ve a horrible, sinking feeling when I consider what I can recall of them.  They’re actually great parts — by themselves.  I’m just terrified that, when I get there, they won’t fit and can’t be made to fit.  If that’s the case, then that’s about one third of the book down the drain and a lot of work to get to before I can have the next book out.

If I’m wrong — things are going well enough between my own read through and my editor’s pile of work to do that she ought to be sitting down to attack it with her mighty Red Pen of Death which I swear is filled with human blood — possibly magically siphoned from the author upon whose work she applies it — instead of ink.  We’ll have some lovely conversations regarding my dyslexia, my inability to grasp various minutia of English grammar and orthography and then I’ll give it one more read for ‘now how in Hell did this get by both of us!?’ moments.

Should the universe be benevolent and kind (please do stop laughing, please) I might have book 2 out by Christmas.  Realistically speaking, I’ll say don’t expect anything before Easter 2014 and I might even wind up so close to 29 June 2013 that I may hold off to release on the 1yr anniversary of the first book.

All told I’m impressed with this first half, really.  There’re some very touching moments, and a good tear jerker in there.  I’ve managed to have some really good humour bits.

For fun I’ll post the only part, aside from a poem from late in the book which has already been released here, I’ll give you a sample of the only other part I’m willing to present to the wider public:

Disclaimer

The story which follows contains people:  Tall people, short people, fat and skinny.  It will contain intelligence, stupidity, ignorance and knowledge.  It will contain people ambulating, masticating, respirating, and articulating.  It will contain people who are homosexuals.  It will contain heterosexual people.  It will contain males, females, and God help us all, humans.

It should be known that the author is not promoting anything.  This story is for enjoyment, entertainment and, if the author might be permitted a moment of vanity, inspiration.

Reading it will not make you gay, straight, masculine, feminine, feline, canine, richer or poorer (well, maybe a little poorer as I hope you bought a copy, but I hope not significantly poorer).  It will not make you smarter or stupider, more or less violent.  It will not send you to Heaven or Hell (I think).  It will give you super powers if read while being exposed to cosmic rays*.

If you like it, fantastic.  If you hate it, I’m sorry.  Just know that you’ve been warned.

Yours with love,

Jaye Em Edgecliff

*Please use cosmic radiation responsibly and only according to the direction of a scientific genius or similar.  Author cannot be held responsible for injury or disfigurement caused by exposure to strange solar emanations.

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If only I could read a calendar …

Published on by JayeLeave a comment

Well, I don’t feel too bright. Forgot my editor is on vacation for two weeks. While it’s theoretically possible for Love or Lust to still come out in July as I stated in my earlier post, it’s far more likely that August will be the earliest.

C’est la vie.