Well, I’ve reached the end of Ready or Not‘s chapter 20. I feel like the next one or the one after should be the wind down to the end and then I can get started on the third book.
So far I’m not sure what to call that one. I’m likely to be several chapters in before I’ve got a clear vision of a name. At least the fourth book has a name: Now & Forever. I think I was planning to call it that all along, I’m not sure, but I am now.
I’m still waiting to hear back from Ms Lakosil to decide how I’m going to proceed.
Which does, by the way bring me to a perfectly related detail. Love or Lustshould be done editing in two weeks, maybe three. I mean done done. It’d be sooner, but I want to give it one more personal read through. The lovely part of this is that the agency’s expected response is supposed to be 2-4 weeks which would put today the earliest I’m likely to hear back and the latest just about the time I finish my read through — just in time to decide what I’m going to do!
One thing I have decided to do, but haven’t got around to is tweaking the cover for Love or Lust to a less dark colour. It doesn’t go as well with the second book. Admittedly it won’t matter if I end up going with an agent and a traditional publisher, but I’m going to operate on the idea that I won’t be using an agent. If I do self-publish the cover will be tweaked down to a shade of blue similar to the maroon that Ready or Not‘s cover has.
Sneek preview of the third book (and part of the second, I suppose):
It’s only the first two chapters, and that’s all I intend to have up, for the moment, but I might elect to add the third chapter too.
There is no downloadable ePUB or PDF sample. That’s too much bother and will be left up to the various eBook retailers to supply. The launch availability is currently iBooks, Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Smashwords, Amazon (print), and Createspace. I’m considering putting up on a little place called DriveThru Fiction as well. It looks easy enough to use, and I won’t say no to a venue that costs nothing to publish through since all it can mean is more sales. If you’ve a favourite eBookstore you don’t see listed feel free to contact me or leave a comment naming it.
I’ve also decided the cover for Ready or Not. Mostly because that gave me something to do that felt constructive while I tried to decide what happens next in the story. I do believe it’s about done as the girls are having an Easter break kickoff party in the part I’m currently working on. Then it’s off to editing, working out a less placeholdery blurb, and then to the editor (yes, I edit things BEFORE I give them to my editor. I happen to like the woman and would feel rather bad if she wound up in an asylum by any action of my own).
I’m starting to feel a little better about Book 2, lately. I’m starting to think that the less cohesive, more anecdotal form it has taken so far might make it a good transitional tale. Something to give a better feel for the characters and their normal lives. In short, rather than one big slice of their life looked at from edge to edge as Book 1 is, Book 2 is more like several little slices and glimpses of time. I don’t know. I’ll get it typed, give it a few read throughs, then decide if it’s a mess or not.
Suffice to say I’m off my writer’s block and things are moving along well.
P.S. Those paying attention will notice that Love or Lust‘s cover says “Jaye Edgecliff” while Ready or Not‘s says “Jaye Em Edgecliff”, that’s because the latter is what I’d prefer, but the former is what I have to do because of a quirk to the cover layout and Book 1 has a finalised cover versus Book 2 which has a cover I’m still playing with.
Love or Lust is still being edited. It’s moving along at a good pace, but apparently I make too many tiny punctuation errors for it to go what, by strict definition, could be called fast. They might even be small enough most people wouldn’t notice them, but between my knowing how to do some of them right (typo, inattentiveness, or messing up when changing something would be how THOSE wind up wrong) and a certain sense of: if I’m going to go through this kind of stress I might as well make sure it’s done right, it just wouldn’t do to leave them be.
Ready or Not is stuck in too many way. Part of it is a long series of migraines. Creative thought and migraines just don’t happen together, full stop. Too I keep having life interfering with it, and finally I just can’t quite get a good handle on what happens next.
I should be set for a, relatively, simultaneous release on Kobo, Nook, Kindle, print, iBooks, Smashwords, and DriveThruFiction. ‘Relatively’ just to account for Murphy’s Law, one of them, I just know, is going to take forever to put the book up in their store in some fashion and possibly require re-upload of the file based on some error it couldn’t have just kicked back when it first scanned the file during the initial upload.
All in all, I look forward to the release. I hope to see mountains of reviews and lots of comments about it.
I should have some previews up very soon. I’m really just waiting to decide where to cut it off at and then I’ll put it here (first few chapters are pretty much done, so shouldn’t be too much trouble).
I’ve just got full, official confirmation that an ISBN is not necessary to publish to iBookstore.
Now, as Smashwords can provide mea free ISBN, and it’s logical to HAVE an ISBN, and I no longer must deal with Smashwords’ neurotic submission process (I’m pretty sure the language I used trying to argue with that damnable meatgrinder over something once borders on mortal sin) I’ll be publishing there as well … needless to say this is looking very up for Love or Lustto be in multiple markets from day one.
Now, I did notice that the method of delivering your OWN content to iBookstore requires one to have a Mac. You COULD just use Smashwords’ (or one of several other aggregators whose names I don’t know) or you could do the highly sensible thing and buy a Mac. I truly deplore Windows and find Linux to be far too much trouble for far too little benefit.
The book is editing swiftly. It feels very slow, but that’s because it is a little long. The Valentine’s deadline has made the fascinating whooshing sound that Douglas Adams was always so fond of them making (how, you ask, as it isn’t yet 14 February … my editor would have to achieve superhuman rates of reading and error correcting to make it by that date). A more accurate measure will be forthcoming as soon as I can give one to myself I’ll pass it along to you.
Look on the bright side, the longer she takes the better edited a story you’ll get! (Yeah, I know, that’s a pretty thin consolation and it’s doing little to make me feel any better too, but REALLY, a bit more patience and you’ll have it … just don’t ask about Ready or Not)
So the final editing of Love or Lustis well under way. It probably won’t be done by Valentine’s Day, but it still might. It is moving at a fair clip, but that doesn’t change that there’s about 140k words and 400-ish pages to get through. Too, I have to make a final read through just to make sure that the final buff and polish is done, so that date will likely be missed and was never a very resounding likelihood anyway.
First off, section separators: Also known as fleurons (and an hundred other things), they do give a certain flair to the page. They’re also a bloody wretch to figure out how to do. With Dingbats type fonts they’re a breeze in the PDF, but they start to become an unholy nightmare in the universe of the ePUB and Kindle editions. Not impossible, mind, but nightmare. An alternative is to just use a little graphic. Dear God save me from things that ought to be black on transparent alpha layer but instead are scans complete with random not exactly white artefacts in the white bits!! Photoshop and I had a lovely row about that. I did make one. It was kind of pretty. Well, that is, until I tried to put it on the page. That didn’t go too well. Still … I’d appreciate feedback on that.
If you click on the word fleurons above it’ll take you to an example image. The alternative is good old fashioned asterisks.
The second bit of thinking was just a bit of fun inspired by how another author did a little pre-release promotion. Seanan McGuire did a Discount ArmageddonA–B–Cs thing that seemed kind of cute. The more I think about it the less I want to do it. So I probably won’t. But just in case I do lose my mind and decide to go with this little touch of lunacy … well … you’ve been warned.
Solidly decided things:
Publishing, I don’t care if you use a publisher or do it yourself, is a good way to go completely mad with indecision, anxiety, self-doubt, and several other things that suddenly have escaped my vocabulary and are lost in the woods some place.
I love my cover art. I’m, torn between ideas regarding it though. I’m very much thinking to keep that layout and just change the colour scheme for each book, and then (naturally) the image. The question is, do I keep finding girl/girl cover art (something I can absolutely do for Ready or Not but is giving me a touch of trouble for later books), or just keep finding pretty images (e.g. the 4th book maybe having a ballet slipper on it or some such). Ah well, I’m not even done with the second book yet and feel like it needs heavy editing so I’ve plenty of time to consider and reconsider this.
The print edition will be somewhere in the neighbourhood of us$10. Sadly, this is due entirely to length. It costs more than the retail price of a novel half this size just to print the bloody things. Which gives me a new found respect for some of the newest Terry Pratchett novels I’ve picked up being about us$10, but doesn’t explain some places charging that much for things like Light Fantasticor Wyrd Sisters! The eBook, though, will likely be closer to us$4 or us$5. Compelling enough arguments could see it as low as us$3 (just use the comments or the contact link), but current ‘wisdom’ says the higher price will attract more sales. We’ll see.
Page numbers. I’ve just realised I’ve no idea how I should like to do the page numbers. Centered and unadorned at the bottom of the page? Unadorned at the bottom corner of the page (obviously this thought is for the print edition only)? Unadorned at the top? If decorated, with tildes or a fleuron/dingbat? Well, don’t ever let anyone tell you self-publishing is easy, or that it’s the lazy way out or any other such nonsense. That said, going through a publisher is just as bad or worse — you may not have to decide a lot of this stuff, but then you have to worry that your first edition might have covers in “50 shades of mud” and “kept them out of the shops“, among too many other less amusing anecdotes by far too many other authors to mention.
I’ll always argue with someone who says writing is ‘hard work’ — I take issue with the work part. The hard … that depends on perspective, writing is challenging in terms of telling a good story well and not losing your mind in the process. Work it is not. Publishing, on the other hand, I will doubt the sanity of anyone who claims is anything but work and be suspicious of anyone who claims it to be easy.
In other news Puppy Bowl is tomorrow!! I’ll, alas, be missing it because a) I’ll be at work and b) I don’t actually have any TV service that doesn’t come via my DVD player.
Just finished typing the bits of Ready or NotI’d written during NaNoWriMo and discovered that the actual final tally is 56,598 words!
That’s very inspiring. I’m still not sure how much the experiment can be dubbed a success — I feel rather strongly that this story is going to wind up needing far more intensive editorial work than Love or Lust did, but we’ll see. With luck I’m just being too hard on myself. I did, after all, think rather poorly of Book 1 until I’d given it two or three read throughs, my editor had seen it and made her comments, and a few friends had taken a look at it.
Well, wish me luck. I now embark on the grand adventure of figuring out what happens in Chapter 20 and how far it is to the end of this one.
Status of Love or Lust, by the by, is that my editor is about to do her final proofread on it. Depending how fast that goes (read just how terrible my spelling and grammar wound up being) I could, conceivably, publish it by Valentine’s day (a rather lovely date to start since that would be approximately the 1yr anniversary of me starting to write it, though I think that actual date was 8 February), otherwise we’re looking around Early march barring any major catastrophes.
Editing of Love or Lusthas slowed due to the holidays. It should pick back up after New Years.
Writing of Ready or Nothas slowed because of chaos at work and home and some of it’s the holidays. I’m typing it, though, which is good. I’d more than doubled the word count without typing a single syllable of it.
Well, peace, love and good wishes to all until next year!
So I’ve laid aside Ready or Not for a spell while I recover from a pretty nasty flu that I’ve been fighting for the entire past week.
I’m using the time, when I’m lucid enough, to edit Love or Lust. I kind of hope to see it out before Christmas or New Year, but I’m not so sure now. There’ve been some layout issues that are bring annoying. I try to work on that even during editing because the edits themselves don’t affect things like graphics, margins, the gutter, etc.
Tedious process but one I’m no stranger to, and so is far faster than the first time I did it. Initially I will be distributing through various online retailers and CreateSpace. I hope, one day to include iBookstore and switch from CS to LSi, but as of right now CreateSpace is simply a more pragmatic choice than Lightning Source.
Pricing is still in consideration, but is likely to be at least us$5.99 for eBook and us$9.99 for print.
Well, it took me to the last day to accomplish it, but I’ve got my 50k words for NaNoWriMo! I’m still not done with Ready or Not, but I’m getting there. Once there I still have to type all of this, normally I do that about every 4 – 8 chapters, but that wasn’t an option if I wanted to have time to get my word count.
Anyway, the migraine fairy has come to visit and I have to see if Sally winds up in hospital. Busy day.
Here I am on the eve of the 27th of November and I’m less than 2000 words away from the 50K target! This means, theoretically, if the word count I’ve managed the past few days continues, I could finish tomorrow.
Ready or Not itself isn’t quite ready to be called done though. Completing NaNoWriMo will put me at right around 92k – 100k words, but like with Love or Lust the final tally will probably be closer to 135k – 140k. This story is heavier on the slice of life element and so the chapters and scenes feel a bit more glimpse in time, or anecdotal. It’s sweet, it’s romantic, but it also has tragedy and eroticism.
I’m quite curious to see where this goes. Especially since once I’ve found out I’ll actually know how their junior year is going to go. Pity it’s not likely to include a week in Paris again — that was fun. Maybe Rome or Naples next year, hmmm.
Well, I’ve reached the end of Ready or Not‘s chapter 20. I feel like the next one or the one after should be the wind down to the end and then I can get started on the third book.
Jaye Em Edgecliff 
