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Writerly Catchup and Odds & Ends
Jul. 7th, 2008 08:45 amOK, 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! ( Minor spoiler for the beginning of book 2. ) Well played sir. The Vacant Throne was a brilliant conclusion to the story. ( MAJOR spoiler for the end of book 3 ) 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,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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! ( Minor spoiler for the beginning of book 2. ) Well played sir. The Vacant Throne was a brilliant conclusion to the story. ( MAJOR spoiler for the end of book 3 ) 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.
