Yes! I have just approved the second proof of Book Two, The Broken. This version included approx. 40 fixes, which I found and spotted in the first proof, mostly spelling mistakes. Now that they all have been successfully incorporated into the manuscript, and nothing new and bad seems to have shown up, the book is ready to go. What happens now is as follows.
Yes, finally! Today, the first proof arrived via courier, and boy, it looks awesome. The book is big and shiny and sexy, and weighs over one kilogram. It’s also one of the thickest books I’ve ever seen, rivaling some of the 1,000+ page mass market paperbacks like The Lord of the Rings or The Song of Ice and Fire, any one of the five books. But it’s dandy and cool, and here it is. The cover is a tiny bit damaged from the shipping, still, it’s the bestest ever.
With some small, unexpected delay in the overall process, I finally approved the 800-page first version of the manuscript of the second book in the The Lost Words series, The Broken. A physical proof ought to be delivered to me via courier service any day now. Then, it’s reading everything all over again and finding the odd spelling error and glitch here and there, but I’ve had the digital proof for a while now, so it should not take too long.
Hello people. Here’s an interesting piece of information that you should read. About a week back, I got a phone call from my project team, telling me that they were forced to change the interior setup for my upcoming, second book in the series, The Broken. Namely, the book was too thick. It runs some 800 pages, and with high-quality cream paper, it is simply not possible to create a proper paperback binding. The alternative? White paper.
Normally, I am quite agnostic when it comes to vendor support on anything. And what I mean by that is, I let them be, and they let me be, and our paths do not cross. Most of the time, I prefer to resolve things on my own, and other times, you simply do not wish to contact the support, because you know you will be losing precious life cycles that cannot be restored. Not so with Amazon, I am pleased to announce, without bias or asslicking.
Even though my English is fairly awesome, I would not dare publish a book without submitting it to a rigorous, professional proofing service. Indeed, approx. three weeks ago, I got the book back from my editor, with all the little fixes, changes, suggestions, and whatnot added therein. Mostly, they were consistency fixes, to align with a certain writing style, but also some grammar and spelling touches. Yesterday evening, I uploaded the proofed manuscript to the publisher’s website, with all the little changes added. This means I ought to receive the first print draft soon. This means Book Two, named The Broken, ought to be released in the coming weeks.
This sounds like a post-trauma group therapy slogan, but iI assure you, it is not. We’re here to discuss a rather interesting topic, namely, does one improve in whatever they are doing after doing it for a long while? There’s the so called 10,000-hour threshold of excellence and a few other metrics, all of which tell us that you will get better, no matter how bad or good you are, just by doing it. Well, I wanted to see if this was true, so I put myself to a test.
Well, in the last year, I was quite busy finishing Book Two of the series, and then cranking up Book Three in a record time of about three months. The effort gave me a very good opportunity to observe and evaluate my own writing habits and see whether I was improving, so to speak, using my own yard stick as the measurement tape. And I think there might be some truth in old proverbs.
Survival is a mean, cold bastard. You think you’ve got it all figured out, then the world ends, and you realize, well, not quite. At least, that’s what the twelve stories in The End, a short story apocalyptic anthology featuring speculative fiction written by the SFFWorld.com forum members, tell us. And so you learn that the end can be faced in many different ways, by being nice to your floor cleaner, by ingesting bacteria, through introspection, with celestial physics making its naughty things.
Anyhow, some of us agreed to do a tour. Each week, someone else would blog shortly about their experience with the anthology, and give a short blurb on a story that impressed them, an angle they liked best, a message they would like to focus on. This week is my turn, and so let me tell you what I had in mind.
Hullo, friends. The End: Visions of Apocalypse is an anthology presented by SFFWorld.com members, and it includes twelve stories that detail various depictions of the end of the world. The anthology features the work of Michael J. Sullivan, Hugh Howey, Tristis Ward, and nine other writers, myself among the bunch, all with their own apocalyptic visions. From grim destruction to tragic suffering, and even humor, no version of the Earth is safe. Well, the world did not end when it supposed to, and now, the book is also available on Amazon.
Dear readers, as you most vividly recall, several months ago, I participated in a writing contest called The End – a short story apocalyptic anthology featuring speculative fiction written by the SFFWorld.com forum members. As you even more vividly remember, I was voted among the winners. And now the book compiling the stories is out, just a few days before the world officially ends, so you’d better hurry and grab yourself a copy. Best thing? It’s free.