Writerly Catchup and Odds & Ends

[jpskewedthrone]

OK, this is a catch-up post, mostly about writing and the books.

First, the revisions to Well of Sorrows are DONE! Done, done, done!! I actually finished them on July 4th (yes, I spent almost all day on revisions; I'm dedicated). I then immediately wrote out two notes about things I wanted to change. *headdesk* Yesterday I spent most of the day going through the entire manuscript and making those two changes (they were word changes--making the titles of some of the characters different) and printing out the entire manuscript. Before I get to the numbers that some of you may be interested in, I have to add that the revisions process was made more difficult because of the letter "t". Yes, all problems have and will continue to be blamed on the letter "t". This is because, for some inexplicable reason, my keyboard has decided that whenever I hit the "t" key, I actually want two "t"s when in fact, most of the time, I don't. So I gett senttences like tthis. Or perhaps like thtis because I tytpe fast.t So there were some additional challenges to the revisions process that I was not expecting.

In any case, the numbers:

I cut 144 pages from the manuscript. Not as much as I wanted, but enough to get the book to within a sort of kinda reasonable range of 650 pages. This is still pushing the "too much" button, but I don't think it will push the "must kill my author" button on my editor. I'm going to hand it in as is and attempt to not worry about, thus setting myself up for failure. (I will worry about it. All writers worry about it.) Some other numbers that writers out there may be interested in: There's always the struggle about what to report word-wise to the publisher and/or agent, because there's two types of word counts--the word count provided by Word (or whatever word processor you're using), and the estimate of 250 words per page word count. DAW more or less asks for the 250 words per page word count (they actually used to say in their guidelines that you should find an approximate word count using this mathematical process to get a word count of XXX words per page, and then ask that you use that; I just use 250 words per page). Anyway, here are the numbers for each type of word count for my novel. No real reason, just because I was curious (and bored while the manuscript was printing).

Word says that the novel is 180,477 words long.
The 250 words per page says that the novel is 162,500 words long.

Some other things of note about the revision process. It helps for word count if you turn off the widows/orphans option on your word processor. This saves you many pages without actually doing a thing to the words themselves. I don't know how mine got turned on in the first place, but they're now off. Also, one ink cartridge is not enough to print out over 600 pages of manuscript.

OK, enough with the new manuscript. Let's turn to some news about the three books already out, shall we? I still cannot tell everyone the incredibly good news that I hinted about a while ago (has it been a month already?) but I will ask my editor if I can make that public this Tuesday, when I have lunch with her and drop off the new manuscript. But there are a few things of note about my books and the publishing industry.

First, both The Cracked Throne [Kindle] and The Vacant Throne [Kindle] have been kindled and are now available at amazon.com for download. I have no idea why The Skewed Throne [Amazon; Mysterious Galaxy] is not available in kindle version. It seems kind of stupid to have the second and third book available, but not the first. But what do I know? Anyone have any ideas about this? In any case, if you kindle (and don't have the print versions already), you can now get my books. Or at least some of them.

Second, the paperback version of The Vacant Throne is now available for PREORDER at amazon.com. It won't be out until January 6, 2009, but it's there and apparently someone has preordered it already because it's got a ranking. So if you're desperately awaiting the third novel in paperback, you can preorder it now. I'd like to point out that preordering DOES help the author because it tells the distributor and the stores that there's interest in the book before it even becomes available, so they tend to order in more copies or at least pay more attention to the book. So preorder books if you know you're going to get them! I'd also like to point out that January 6th is SIX MONTHS AWAY!!! Do you really want to wait that long to read it? It's available in hardcover! At a discount! Right now! *evil grin*

And thirdly, I thought I'd share a review and a piece of fan mail I got. I don't get fan mail all that often (I'm certainly not deluged) but when I do it feels GOOOOOOOOD. So here's my most recent piece of fan mail (I asked for permission to post this):

"Over the course of the last four weeks or so, I bought and read straight through the Throne trilogy. I have never been a fan of fantasy novels. . . . From the first page of the Skewed Throne I fell in love with the story. It was wonderful to read a fantasy series that was oddly down to earth. There weren't dragons and monsters, there wasn't an excessive use of "magical powers", etc. It was a story about characters and relationships, government and politics, and so many wonderful things.

I read the Skewed Throne in two days flat in hotel rooms and couldn't wait to get back to Buffalo to get the Cracked Throne. I have to tell you, the very intro to the Cracked Throne totally got me! I panicked when I read that Varis has lost the river...until she woke up and we found out that we were witnessing a different person's life. Well played sir. The Vacant Throne was a brilliant conclusion to the story. When Eryn sacrificed herself to resurrect the Throne, I never saw that coming at all.

Your writing is absolutely beautiful; it's been ages since I've read a book with such vivid imagery. I could always picture precisely what the world around Varis looked like.

I have to tell you that I eagerly await your fourth novel."

Cool, huh? Writers live for this. Or at least, I do. *grin*

Also, jaxom92 has recently read The Cracked Throne [Amazon; Mysterious Galaxy] and had some nice things to say about it on his LJ. So check it out. He brings up a few things about reading and reading speed and stuff that might deserve a few comments even outside of the review of the book.

Comments

[antonstrout.livejournal.com]

remind me not to start writing epic fantasy... I'd have to quit my day job to even hit the word counts on a regular basis! Hooray for short urban fantasy!

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

I don't think I could write urban fantasy either. Not for word counts, just because I'd have to keep everything so real! (Although I guess my "mainstream" novel FEVER could be interpreted as urban fantasy . . . sort of).

[dancingwriter.livejournal.com]

What a wonderful letter--definitely the kind of thing that gives a writer a nice warm glow inside!

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

A warm, fuzzy glow. *grin*

[ceibhfhionn22.livejournal.com]

Cool. I live for huge, gigantic, long books. I read at the speed of light when I bother to sit down and actually read. I am so busy, and it's summer!, that I don't have much time for reading. The good part is, I can sit down and read just about anywhere.

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

We'll see what the editor says about whether this will stay a "fat fantasy". *grin*

[doctodd.livejournal.com]

Congrats on the awesome fan mail as well as the revisions! But the Kindle? Sigh. Where is the Sony Ebook reader love? ;)

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

Hey, it's doctodd! I haven't heard from you for a while. But I guess having kids and stuff makes life busy.

I think DAW is working on the whole ebook idea for other platforms.

[doctodd.livejournal.com]

I have been out of the loop and on paternity leave the past 2 months. But sadly I have have to go back to work next week. I did sell my first short story though, so I will soon be an official Published Author. The anthology (horror) comes out this fall. Now I'm going back to my SF story that I started a while back and then set aside when the baby came.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

First, yay yay for being done! Done is an awesome word.

Word count is going to be the death of me as I query. Some agents are adamant that word count should be in MSWord, some want SMF and most don't say either way. Makes life interesting.

I do have a question.

Word says that the novel is 180,477 words long.
The 250 words per page says that the novel is 162,500 words long.

Did you reverse those? On all of my books the count in Word is always much smaller than SMF. Because if this is right, I've been doing something wrong for years.

[nymeria87.livejournal.com]

I was just wondering about the very same thing. My official MS word count is 106,326, while the SMF count would be 131,000 *gasp!*

If SMF is actually making the finished manuscript appear shorter, I must have done something wrong too :p

Big Words or Little Words

[vespican.livejournal.com]

It's my understanding the Word (and probably other word processing systems) count each grouping of letters as a word. Thus is you write a page with nothing but short, three, four, or five letter words, it may well be over the SMF of 250. If you use a lot of big words, or have a lot of short comments in dialogue form, you may well have under the standard 250 on that page. It's been my experience that the "actual" word count from the computer is generally higher. I guess that means I restrict myself to using shorter words. Anyway, my first manuscript comes out at 99,000 in SMF, and close to 120,000 as counted by the computer. (It's been awhile since I checke the actual figure.)
Dave

Re: Big Words or Little Words

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

I don't know how MSWord counts the words, but maybe it has something to do with the doublespacing? I don't know.

It's probably that I'm using alot of small words. *grin*

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

I believe the word counts are correct for both, although I'll have to go back and check. I always report thte SMF count unless the agent/editor requests the other count. (And honestly, I haven't seen anyone that does . . . but I was doing the agent/editor search over 4 years ago so things may have changed.)

[vcmorris.livejournal.com]

Congrat on EVERYTHING! Wow, you must be flying high after that stunning bit of fan mail. I wonder if the Cornell Campus Store carries any of your books? I *hanging head in utter shame* have yet to read any of them but I will, honestly I will - especially after reading the fan letter. It normally takes me a LONG time to read a book because I seem to have so little time for reading, in between all the writing and editing of my own stuff. You're NEXT on the list! PROMISE!

As an aside: Whenever I see "The Skewed Throne", I want to read it as "The Skewered Throne" - visions of some lucky person sitting upon it, nibbling on a loaded and steaming spiedie skewer or something.

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

Skewered Throne is actually an incredibly common misinterpretation of the title of the first book. It never crossed my mind. However, it is still quite appropriate. You'll see why once you read the books. *give you the evil eye*

[libwitch.livejournal.com]

*claps* for revisions!

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[ruthannereid.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's FABULOUS! I can hardly wait for this super-sekrit news, too!

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Unfortunately, after talking to my editor yesterday, I STILL have to wait to give out the secret news. But I'll announce it the instant I have the "GO!" from my editor.

[jaxom92.livejournal.com]

I will definitely pre-order the Vacant Throne in paperback. While I agonize (well, maybe it's not that bad) over getting to the next book, I have a distinct limit in shelf space and try to get all my books in paperback. So, I eagerly await the January 6th release date. Six months... *grumble*

Thanks for the link. Yesterday I was just writing for my friends list, which you do happen to be on, but had no expectation that it would actually be read by the author. Surprise, surprise and silly me. By the way, after I got done I immediately threw, yes threw, the book at my mother and told her to read it (she read the first one at my recommendation). Unfortunately we live under the same roof so you don't get two sales out of that particular recommendation, but you do get two fans.

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

Two fans is good. *grin* And I realize that some people prefer or (for whatever reason) need the paperback versus the hardcover, so don't worry about that. Any purchase is a good purchase!

I saw the new post about the connections between reader/writer and making writer more real. I almost responded to it, but I figured commenting within an hour of when you posted it after commenting so quick on the previous review post might seem a little . . . stalkerish. It wouldn't have been stalkerish, just had time to be checking LJ on a regular basis. But I wouldn't want to, you know, LOSE a fan. *grin*

[garlikmongere.livejournal.com]

Um, you're using an inkjet printer to print something that I'm assuming is black and white? I highly recommend getting a laser printer. A couple years ago they were under $100 for black and white only, and while a toner cartridge may be more expensive than an ink cartridge (about $70, so not that much more expensive in some cases), toner lasts a reasonably long amount of time (4500 pages, for mine). Inkjets are great for color things (especially photos), and finding specialty paper (ie photo paper, t-shirt transfers), but for large numbers of plain text pages laser printers are really nice.

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

Well, I only print something out that's that big once a year, if that, so the inkjet works well, since most of everything else I print during the year does use color. But since I'm looking at getting a new computer in the near future I'll check out the laser printers as well. I'm sure they're faster as well.

[garlikmongere.livejournal.com]

Okay that makes sense. The black laser printers should be faster, although the price goes up with the speed. I opted for a color laser printer because I wanted colored graphs and pictures in my thesis. Its fine for printouts of slides (even with a fully covered background) and graphs, but it doesn't have the resolution of an ink jet printer for high quality photos (which I never print out anyway). The color version is slower than a regular black and white, and more expensive, so I don't really recommend one as much as I like mine. Toner doesn't seem to dry out or go bad like ink cartridges, so I haven't had to replace the color cartridges in mine in the three years or so I've had it even though I rarely use the color (I'm still using the starter toners of 1500 pages that it came with). A regular laser printer is probably still worth taking a look at, but maybe it'd be easier to find a friend with one and borrow theirs once a year. ::shrug::

[footlingagain.livejournal.com]

Hooray for finishing the revisions!

And that is a fantastic letter - well-deserved praise, I'm sure. (I also have to confess I haven't read the books yet. I plead poverty, but really I'm scared to read them and be shown just how far I still have to go.....)

They're on my wish list, though and my birthday is coming up :)

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

Happy early birthday! And here's hoping you get your wishes. *grin*

You could also get your local library to buy the books for their shelves and then just check the books out. This solves the poverty situation (which I can so relate to after *mumble mumble* years of grad school) and still counts has a sale for me. Just make sure you suggest they BUY the books for their library, rather than just have them interlibrary loan the books to the library.

word count

[jkielec.livejournal.com]

this response is a little dated from your original post, but that's a good tip on the widow/orphan trick. I always have that problem, and the default is actually set to 'on' in MS Word since 'professional-looking documents don't do that' or whatever. But it shaved about 7 pages off my manuscript when I removed that option, plus things actually look better when you DON'T have different margins on the bottom of each page from your word processor trying to adjust things.

And congrats on getting the book trimmed down in such a timely matter!