Paksworld

In Kings of the North, which only the alpha readers among you have yet read,  the POV characters leave Aarenis at the end of the campaign season, so whatever happens there between, say, a few tendays before the Autumn Evener  and Midwinter is offstage for that book.   And in that book, what happens in Aarenis isn’t relevant to that book, but it is relevant to the next…the one I’m on now.

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Kings of the North has now traveled down the hall (so to speak) from Editorial to Production, as Editor called yesterday with one last tweak–and then approved the tweak I provided.    A few more things need to be sent off–the front matter stuff, dedication and the like, and a map specific to this book–but basically it’s now on the cog railway towards its emergence next year as a book on the shelf.

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Very early this morning (one-ish, with some leftover until two-ish)  I finally got the main revision tangle sorted out.    Slept a few hours and went back over everything this morning before sending it off to Editor.  Naturally found new things to smooth out, including one word change Editor wanted that I’d forgotten about.

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Sleep helped.   I had other things to do yesterday afternoon but slept about four hours and about seven more overnight.   Looking at my attempt to start on the last revision puzzle yesterday…I should’ve waited until after the sleep.

However, it’s a puzzle that some of you may find interesting, and I hope to keep it spoiler-free.

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…and tomorrow the book’s out in the stores.  I hope you in the US are as excited as I am, and that if you pre-ordered online, your copies arrive on your doorstep (or whatever you use) on time tomorrow.    (Those of you in Europe who already have the UK version…try not to hand out too many spoilers.  At least until the end of the week, OK?)

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Some of you may remember the posts I did last year during the Spring Revision Season, but some of you weren’t here yet, so I’ll chatter away as if you couldn’t look up the posts by category and find them (but go ahead if you want.)   Editor-revisions are basically the same as any other revision except that Editor has more experience and more clout even than DRW and Karen S- and Ellen M-.

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You would be SO happy that Editor sends me these, if you knew what gets fixed before you ever see the book.   I know some of  you think you’d like the raw, untouched text better, but…no.  Seriously,  editors…and Editor in particular…make books better.  So did the alpha readers and my agent, all of whom had comments that made me rethink some things.

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When I did the chapter-by-chapter summary of Book 2, in order to produce a one-paragraph summary for Editor, I discovered that chapter 15 was missing.  Completely.  As if someone had cut it out.   I had a vague memory of what was in it, but it wasn’t there.  That suggested that I’d revised it separately at some point and then cut the old and failed to past in the new.  But…where was the new?   Had I lost it somewhere?  Read the rest of this entry »

For the alpha readers…a comment below the cut.  For the rest of you, spoiler below the cut.

I’m still 2000 words over my own self-imposed limit–2206, to be precise–but almost-nearly-everything is done.  The giant awful chapter has been neatly split up into logical chapter-like units (it’s not just the size, it’s the structural integrity) and looking at one comment of Agent’s….no, there’s a reason someone expresses sadness at someone else’s death repeatedly.    It would be unrealistic for that character not to be reminded and have it cross his awareness.  Editor will have to weigh in for me to change it. Read the rest of this entry »

Been at this all morning and of course found something that needed massive amounts of work.   Had to print out another 40-something pages, to check for repeated points in multiple conversations…the sort of thing that real people do, but that (so I’ve been told for year) annoys readers no end.   “He said that already!”   (As if we didn’t all say the same things over and over…but fiction isn’t reality, and this is one of the ways.)

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