Tag: writing

Psst… Wanna Read My Book?

~ petefordwriter ~ 1 Comment

. . . Well, you can! Advance Reader Copies of Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia are available as PDFs for a short time, and you can have one in return for an honest review posted on Amazon, Goodreads, or your own blog. Xchyler Publishing might want to quote you, too. Interested? Click the Contact tab above, fill in the form (make sure to include a contact email address that I can pass on to the marketing director at Xchyler, who will be sending the ARCs out) and submit it. I’ll take it from there.

While I’m blogging, let’s have an update. Last week was a nightmare—flooded roads Monday, family member in hospital Tuesday and Wednesday, then water in the basement Friday; laid over that was a slew of day-job technical problems that had to be fixed. Despite all of which I managed to finish proofreading Gunn & Bohemia. What a week.

Today, working at home while waiting for guys to come and dry out the basement carpet. They didn’t show up until 2:30pm, but when they did they got on with the job.

On the writing front: I’ve been working up a short story for Xchyler’s next Steampunk anthology contest, which opens for submissions at the end of October. I have the whole story in my head; next step, write it out scene-by-scene.

But that can wait a bit. Today’s been busy and I feel the need to wind down. Time for dinner and telly; I have an urge to watch The Dresden Files if it’s still listed on Netflix.

Until next time . . .

A Crazy Few Weeks, and A Couple Of Shows

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No, I haven’t been deliberately neglecting the blog posts. I’ve just been far, far too busy.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my publisher, Xchyler Publishing, brought forward the release date of Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia by about a month from the original mid-November date. I’m thrilled, of course, but there’s always a downside—in this case, that being the deadlines are now much, much tighter. And so I and my extremely dedicated line editor, Jessica, have been hammering away at getting everything in shape in time. And we’ve done really, really well. The edits of the early chapters were completed four, five or more days past their deadlines, but through sheer hard work we’ve pulled that back in; we’re down to the last four chapters, and from the look of things we have every chance of finishing the job within the next three days—that is, only two days past deadline (and there’s even a chance that we’ll finish only one day late).

Doing that meant pretty much everything else had to go to the wall. Last weekend was twenty-one hours of knuckling down, and since then every lunchtime at work has been taken up, as well as every evening at home. And so, there’s been no time to compose blog posts. This is the first breathing space I’ve had, and it’s only because my editor was out of town yesterday.

That makes it sound as if there hasn’t been anything else. Not true; there has been time taken out for some fun stuff…

A couple of weeks ago we went to see Oleander at Moe’s BBQ and Bowling in Englewood. That was, frankly, a bit weird. I mean, Oleander, people; the band that brought you Are You There? You’ve probably heard it, even if you don’t know it by name. And there they were, playing to no more than fifty people. We were sitting twenty feet from the little stage, and the band members manned the CD/t-shirt sale table in person after the show, and shook hands, chatted, and signed CDs.

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Oleander at Moe’s

Last night we were at the Ogden in Denver to see Seether, who were supported by Eye Empire and Ten Years.

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Seether at the Ogden

Great show. We saw Eye Empire last year, when they supported Seether at the Fillmore; they were good then, and they were even better last night. As for Ten Years, I’d never heard of them until the day I bought the tickets, but I was seriously impressed, and I’ll be buying their CD next chance I get.

So… it’s Sunday, and I have some down time. What to do, what to do… Tea, I think, and a late breakfast. By this time next week, all the line editing should be done, and (if all goes well) most or all of the proofreading. I won’t know what to do with myself. But I’m sure I’ll think of something.

Until next time…

A Warning For Writers

~ petefordwriter ~ Leave a comment

You’re writing, planning to publish? If so, check this out.

There are a number of companies out there who claim that they’re publishers, but they’re not—they are in the business of fleecing writers. They might throw something out there to make themselves look good, but the chances of your book ever actually appearing in print are slim. The chances of you being charged thousands of dollars for nothing in return, on the other hand, are very good indeed.

A point to note: Real publishers don’t charge. For anything. They get paid the same way, at the same time, that you do—from sales of your book, once it’s out there. If a “publisher” says anything about you paying money up front, clamp both hands round your wallet and keep their hands in sight as you back away.

I follow the Writer Beware Blogs on Facebook; their blog is invaluable to anyone looking to publish, and I recommend checking them out. This blog post was spurred by their latest post, in fact; you can (and should) read it by clicking here.

Fake publishers are a cancer right now, fed by the changes in publishing and hoping to catch new writers who aren’t familiar with the territory. And don’t make the mistake of thinking that “big” names are safe—Penguin associated themselves with Author Solutions, one of the worst offenders out there. If you’re about to go with a publisher, check them out first; check that blog, and also find out what other people are saying about them. We all know that the Internet can be a minefield; Internet publishing is no different. Be safe.

Another Milestone

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Followers of this blog might have seen Saturday’s post, in which I moaned and groaned about having no editing to do on Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia, and how it was turning me into a nervous wreck.

I needn’t have worried. Before the day was out, a batch of line edits appeared in my inbox, and yesterday (Sunday) turned out to be a busy day—my changes went back to Jessica, my line editor, and then more came back, and before I knew it, files were bouncing back and forth like tennis balls at Wimbledon. A great day for progress.

And in the middle of all this, something else happened, the significance of which I didn’t realise right away. Chapters 10 & 11—the last two that were with Terri, my copy editor—were approved, and sent through to line editing. It doesn’t sound like much, and it didn’t really hit until Terri sent an email later.

Copy editing is done. DONE! Another milestone!

But there’s a downside. It means that Terri’s role in the project is at an end. Of course, that’s the way process goes—but I was surprised at just how personally the news impacted me. Terri and I have been working on this book for so long, it’s going to seem strange not having her wit and wisdom for the last stages.

There will be other projects, though, and that’s a good thought.

In other news: the release date for Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia has been brought forward! It was originally slated for November 15, but that’s changed; if all goes well, it’ll be available a few weeks earlier. I have a new date, but for now I’m keeping it under my hat—the deadlines are obviously much tighter now, and I don’t want to say something, only to have to change it again in the event that we slip a few days. But so far, we’re well on track to make it happen. Copy editing is complete, almost two weeks ahead of deadline, and line editing is going well. It’s looking good.

Potential problem, at least for today: I woke up with a fever, headache, and a sore throat. It’s not strep throat—despite the fact that some people at work have had that recently, this is something else. I’ve called in to take the day as sick—but there’s editing to be done, and I know that I won’t be able to rest in bed knowing that I could be doing something, even if it’s only a little bit, to push on. So I’m writing this post as a warm-up. And now it’s done, and it’s time to get some Dayquil and coffee, and take a gentle run at Chapter 4 line edits.

Until next time . . .

Going Round The Bend

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For the first time I can remember in something like five months, I actually have no writing work to do—and it’s driving me nuts.

Weekends are, for me, the best days to write. Saturday and Sunday mornings are usually quiet, and I can slam through a couple of thousand words pretty easily, or focus on editing for a long stretch without interruptions and distractions. Recently, I’ve been working on editing Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia, and that’s been keeping me busy pretty much every weekend (except last weekend, of course, since we were at the Salt City Steamfest). It’s been so long since I did anything else, I’ve got used to spending weekend mornings doing that.

Today is different. I looked at the tracking sheet I use to keep up with where things are—and there’s nothing for me to do. Nada. Zip. Of the twelve chapters, two are with my copy editor, and the other ten are with my line editor. Until I get something back from one of them, I’m stuck. I want to move, do something, edit, edit, edit. But I can’t.

As Leon said, nothing is worse than having an itch you can never scratch.

I have other writing projects. There’s Smoke and Mirrors, which is, right now, a half-written first draft that was put to one side several months ago to make way for Gunn & Bohemia. But that’s a big job; I need to completely rework the timeline, for one thing, and then almost certainly rewrite—or at least edit, pretty drastically—every scene that’s been written so far. That’s not something I want to get into until I can work on it exclusively. That means not until G & B is ready to be unleashed. Now is not the time.

There’s the fantasy short I’ve been working on here and there, for Xchyler’s Back To The Future anthology contest. It’s partly written, and submissions are open until the end of the month, so there’s time. The trouble with that one is . . . well, to be honest, it’s boring. The story is complete, and I’m partway through the writing, but it’s too plain. It needs something—a twist, a surprise ending, some whiz-bang. As it stands, everything is too obvious, too easy. I need to think of something to make it stand out. If I can come up with something, perhaps I can really get that one going.

In a little while, there’s Xchyler’s release party for A Dash Of Madness (see my previous post for details and links), and I’m planning on being there at least part of the time. Another Saturday tradition is an hour or so on Skype, chatting with family. And the front lawn needs mowing; I’ll be taking care of that later. This is also the last weekend of the Colorado Renaissance Festival, and we were planning on going—but Kate’s sick with something and not up to the trip. Oh well; next year, maybe.

There are gaps to fill where the editing used to be. Editing drives me crazy at times—but not editing is driving me crazier, quicker.

I think I need coffee.

Until next time, gentle reader . . .

[Update, Sunday morning: three chapters came back from my line editor yesterday afternoon. I am editing. My day is complete.]

What A Week

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It’s been a few days since I’ve posted. It’s been a busy week; I haven’t had the time.

On the writing front, I’ve been trying to work on line edits for Chapter 2 of Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia. I had a few minutes here and there, but not enough time to really get into it until yesterday, when I was at last able to finish the first pass—that’s the one where I take care of the minor rewording and punctuation fixes; it helps built up some momentum for the second pass, where I deal with the bigger (but also, thankfully, far fewer) changes that require heavier rewriting.

So, right now, that’s where I am with Chapter 2: warming up with a blog post while I wait for tea to brew, then I’ll be getting into that second pass. I have every intention of getting that finished and back to my line editor today.

On the everyday stuff: Monday I took off sick (fever; no idea what brought that on), Tuesday we drove down to the INS in Denver to take care of some papers, then Wednesday it was back to day-job work—which is under a tight deadline, so I wasn’t able to get into the above-mentioned editing even during lunch breaks.

Today, we’d originally planned to go to the Colorado Renaissance Festival down in Larkspur—but we ended up watching Breaking Bad (for the first time) on Netflix until 2am. So now it’s coming up to 10:30am and I’m barely awake, and in any case the weather doesn’t look so good. So I think this is going to be an easy day at home. In a little while, once my eyes are properly open, I’ll get back into the editing.

Once that editing’s done and the chapter’s in shape, the next thing I have planned is an hour or so on the still-as-yet-untitled fantasy short story. On that one, I’d reached a scene in which the two central characters have just met, and there’s a certain amount of dialogue—but on reading it back, the conversation comes over as forced. That needs some work, then it’s on with the story. Submissions open in ten days, and it’s not likely that I’ll be finished in time to submit on day one, but I have all of August; it will be completed in time.

Another thing I want to try to take care of today is a little bit of Twitter maintenance, spurred by a post on the Xchyler Publishing blog. As I think I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a follower-farmer; I don’t do the thing where you follow a boatload at random, hope they follow back, dump the ones who don’t, rinse and repeat. I don’t see the point. I follow people who have something interesting to say—or at least, that’s the intention—and I try to read all their tweets, so that limits the number I can follow (currently that’s about a hundred and forty). But it turns out that I’m following some people who really don’t say anything beyond marketing their book (or another person’s book), and perhaps retweeting in bursts (I’m talking about individuals here; I also follow publishers, and I expect them to be marketing—that’s their business—so that’s ok with me). There are also a few who I’m following purely because I followed them back in the days before I realised what was going on with the boatload system, and I never got round to cleaning that up. It’s past time to prune that particular bush, methinks.

Next weekend, we’ll be at Salt City Steamfest! The plan is to be there all day Saturday, so come and find me—I’ll be the one not wearing much in the way of Steampunk gear (I really don’t have any just yet, and I won’t have time to get any before the show). I’ll likely be at or near the Xchyler Publishing booth most of the time, and I’ll probably be on a panel to answer a few questions at some point. It promises to be great fun, and we’re looking forward to it.

Until next time . . .

The Peripatetic Programmer

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A busy few days, one way and another, hence the shortage of blog posts.

At work, I am still The Peripatetic Programmer—moving stealthily from project to project, leaving behind no trace but a trail of fixed problems. Possibly, the other developers catch sight of me as I melt into the shadows, then they say, “Who was that masked man?”

Or not. It’s Friday, it’s been busy week, and I have to say I might be a little punchy.

On the writing/editing front, I sent back line edits for Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia, Chapter 1, a couple of days ago, and I just sent what I hope will be the last copy edits for Chapter 6 about half an hour ago. Which means, at this moment, it’s all in the hands of my editors; my line editor has Chapters 1-5 and 8, and my copy editor has the rest. I could get markups back at any time, of course, but it does leave me with some time to work on the as-yet-untitled fantasy short story I’m planning to enter in Xchyler’s next anthology contest. So that’s probably how I’ll be spending this weekend.

Right now though, time for a relaxing evening. A blog post, perhaps a little blog maintenance. We’re planning a quick trip out to the local bookstore in a little while. Later, crack a can of beer and watch an episode or three of Person Of Interest. Nice.

Have a great weekend, gentle reader. Until next time . . .

Milestone

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I finally got through editing Chapter 11 of Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia this morning—and then Chapter 12, being very short compared to the others (only about two thousand words—not much more than an epilogue, really) followed shortly after. Then I started, and finished, the polishing pass. Chapters 9, 10, 11 AND 12 of have all gone off to my copy editor. WOOT! And . . . rest.

That’s not the end of it yet, of course. The previous versions of Chapters 6 & 7 came back with some markup, and there’s still line editing to get through, and a bit more after that—but this is a major milestone. All the heavy lifting is done, after what seems like months. Actually, it HAS been months. Much as I’ve enjoyed working on G & B, I’m looking forward to putting it to bed and getting into something different.

The Tenth Day

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Tuesday morning’s post was, shall we say, a little premature. At the time I thought I was in for an easy day and an early out. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

There was a slow morning, then I helped interview a couple of people, and then there was a meeting about a new project.

And then the used food hit the ventilation; a system that’s been in production for a while had developed a problem, and the people who’d developed it are no longer with us. I got drafted.

It seems I am now the resident Developer Without Portfolio—able to move stealthily from project to project, jump tall buildings in a single bound, etc.

Well, I fixed the problem. Problems, actually—there were three, it turned out. It meant a working day of eleven and a half hours, but considering that I had to pull apart a web application that I’d never been involved with and knew nothing about (I don’t even know what it’s for, really, even now), dig into its guts and figure out what was suddenly wrong with it, I don’t consider that half bad.

On top of the work I’d done at the weekend, by Tuesday night I’d worked nine days with a few hours on Sunday afternoon as the only break.

Yesterday morning, which was Wednesday, I was ready to get back to editing work on Chapter 10 of Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia. Except that I wasn’t, really. I worked on it for an hour or so, then like a racehorse that’s decided it’s had enough, my brain started refusing fences. After nine days of brain-busting, I needed a proper rest. The Tenth Day ended up being a well-deserved day of rest.

One thing I’ve learned: when editing, if I reach a point where I know I should be able to see what’s needed, but I simply can’t, it’s time to stop. If I push it, all that happens is that I have to give up on it anyway, then when I start again the next day, it’s looking back at me with red eyes and yellow fangs, daring me to grapple.

So I stopped. I saved what I’d done, backed it up, then stretched out on the sofa with a coffee and watched The Ninth Gate, then Total Recall.

A night’s sleep, and this morning I got back to work, and things are much, much better. Chapter 10 is done, gentle reader, and I’m eight pages into Chapter 11 (which is forty pages long, so there’s a way to go yet).

I have four more days after today before I have to go back to the day job, so I’m going to take it easy; get the work done, but not push so hard that I burn out. Four hours a day, maybe five, then stop. And for now, for today, I’ve stopped.

And it’s time to stop blogging, too. I need a coffee, and another movie.

Until next time . . .

Tuesday. Almost the Weekend.

~ petefordwriter ~ Leave a comment

Ah, lovely. After today, I have the rest of the week off, so essentially I have a five-day weekend, beginning . . . well, just as soon as I get out of here today, which will probably be around 3pm. Unless I can justify leaving a bit earlier, which might be the case.

That technical problem that I mentioned the other day? Fixed, as of yesterday. We were looking at all kinds of things for the cause, and the root of the problem turned out to be a single entry of incorrect data in a database table. I’d never have spotted it, had it not been for someone pointing out that one page on the web application’s display didn’t look right; that was the key.

So that particular fire is out, and that’s left things a little bit quiet around here this morning. I have a couple of small tasks on one project that will need doing, but I can’t touch them until the analyst gets in, which won’t happen for another half hour, probably. The other major project I was involved with has been reshuffled and now I’ll just be consultant for that. And I have another major project coming up, but there’s nothing doing on that until we have a kick-off meeting later today. So, right now, I have a bit of breathing space. Hence a few minutes to post something here, while listening to Vortex Rikers on the headphones.

Tomorrow, then, I’ll be able to get back to writing. Five whole days, during which I should be able to finish the copy edits on Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia. I’m a little way into Chapter 10 (same place I was the other day—I haven’t had time to work on it), so I’m on the home straight. Chapter 9 needs a polishing pass before I return it to my editor, and I also got Chapter 1 back from the line editor the other day; I haven’t looked at it yet, so I don’t know how much work it’ll need—but it won’t be as tough as the first round of copy editing. I hope. So the plan is, finish chapters 10, 11, and 12, polish them and send them off, then get into line edits. It should be a productive few days.