Holly Lisle's Blog, page 96

The Wednesday People #wabwm

So it turns out I’m not, much to my utter frustration, done with the print version of WARPAINT yet.

One of my only-slightly-less-rushed Wednesday people (folks who missed the print deadline, but got corrections in in time to help me with the ebook versions) found a mistake so egregious I’m going to have to re-submit the print version a THIRD time. It’s one word. But WORDS MATTER, and this one is so very much the wrong word.

So my Wednesday folks are now listed in the both the PRINT and EBOOK versions of the ACKS, instead of just in the ebook version.

And everyone will get a better book.

But I’m pretty sure at this point that the eBook versions are going to be available about a week before the print version. I’m sorry about that.

Had to re-do the WARPAINT Print version

First thing this morning, found the notice from CreateSpace in my mailbox letting me know the book was good to go…”but images less than 200 dpi may appear blurry in print.”

Didn’t have any images, but I DID have the text itself.

So rather than run the chance of the book being blurry, I’ve spent the last three and a half hours exporting the Scrivener version into Pages, redoing the typesetting, spacing, headers, footers, page numbering, page breaks…

Anyway, it’s done, I’ve uploaded the NEW version, and am now starting on the bugs the folks who missed the Monday deadline caught, to do any additional necessary corrections in the ebook versions.

Onward.

It took this long, but the print version of WARPAINT is now published.

10:20 PM.

The print version of WARPAINT is done. It’s in CreateSpace waiting on a file review.

Tomorrow I’ll go through all the bug-hunt files that came in after Monday through midnight today, and do the ebook versions.

Those will almost certainly take a couple days.

The first review is already up for WARPAINT

At least, this is the first one I know about…

http://margaretmcgaffeyfisk.com/warpa...

A shock from my past

Received an email that led me to a complete copy of my 1979 High-School yearbook, of which I was the editor and the artist.

I was not World’s Greatest Yearbook Editor. I had no clue what my most critical job was (it was apparently to flog advertising to pay for the book, something no one mentioned to me the entire year), and I mistook myself for the person who was supposed to ensure that the book looked nice, everyone was in there, and everything was spelled correctly. But I did edit the thing, as well as doing the artwork. I haven’t seen it in pretty close to twenty years—I lost my copy during a panicked move.

You can see the haircuts I gave to myself and my awful glasses if you’re interested, as well as the Medieval parchment section pages I drew. Back then, I still thought I was going to be a commercial artist.

Anyway…

Real life worked out much better than what I imagined in high school.

Okay. The print version bug-hunt on WARPAINT is done

Dragging my dizzy self (awful vertigo today) into the office to do the page PDF version for CreateSpace, and then do the finishing touches on the cover art.

Mammoth, massive, huge, enormous thanks to the people who spent a big chunk of their weekend and Monday bug-hunting the book for me. You were awesome.

And a few quicky notes on things readers frequently mistake for mistakes

While compound adjectives for example, “three-day sale” are frequently hyphenated, adjective phrases that use -ly words are not.

Incorrect: carefully-worded letter

Correct: carefully worded letter
It is correct to use serial semicolons to list items presented as long phrases in narrative, whether items are listed in a single paragraph, or are broken into multiple paragraphs for reading clarity
In situations in which a single character speaks across two or more paragraphs without breaks, you only close the last paragraph with a quotation mark.

Correct: Mary said, “I want to make sure we get there on time.

“It’s hard for me to travel, but nevertheless, I think I’m going to be able to make the trip.

“The thing that worries me most, though, is that some of my fellow travelers will get so far ahead of me that I won’t be able to find them when I arrive.”

Incorrect: Mary said, “I want to make sure we get there on time.”

“It’s hard for me to travel, but nevertheless, I think I’m going to be able to make the trip.”

“The thing that worries me most, though, is that some of my fellow travelers will get so far ahead of me that I won’t be able to find them when I arrive.”

In the second example, it looks like at least one, and possibly two, other speakers are replying, even though these quots are unattributed.
And a final note on the philosphy of the book. A couple readers thought they saw an easy way to solve the book’s core conflict, and asked why Cady didn’t use a specific ability she had to force the people who stood against her to do what she wanted. Aside from the fact that she couldn’t travel to 2000+ separate star systems in the hundred-ish days she had to do what she had to do, or deal face to face with the billions of people who were causing the core conflict, she didn’t do it because the use of force to compel action is by its very nature unethical, and while she did slip once in the book, Cady isn’t.

Getting close on the WARPAINT bug hunt. #wabwm

I’m down to the final bug-sheet sent in on time for the print version, and my objective is to get the print version into CreateSpace today.

It’ll take a few days to become available for purchase, during which time I’ll go over the remaining bug sheets, and add in any additional corrections found on those, and will get the ebook version up on all the sites when that is done.

Will of course have an early-bird discount on the Cady site for my readers as soon as the e-book version comes out. (I just this instant figured out a workaround to do an early-bird discount the print version, too. So if you’re interested, I’ll have details on that on the Cady site, too, when the book’s actually available.

I also have a little surprise story I’ll be releasing—a previously unpublished short story that morphed into “C-The Secret Project,” a full-length novel project that I still want to write.

But the short story stands on its own, and I might as well make it available. I really like it.

It’s…odd.

So. Back to work. I’ll report any good news as it occurs.

Doing WARPAINT print version final corrections today #wabwm

My readers burned the midnight oil, and a bunch of them got their bug-hunt finds in to me.

I spent the weekend AWAY from the book so I would be able to actually see it today. Did what was to have been a cool promo video for WARPAINT instead—except, A) it was dumb, and B) I couldn’t get sound to work on YouTube anyway. So the weekend was a dead loss.

There’s something wrong with Screenflow 4.0.1 that’s generating dead-sound errors in YouTube (and in other software I’ve been using. I’ll HAVE to get this fixed, because Screenflow is how I create the video parts of courses. Or find something that will work.

But not today. Today, WARPAINT.

Oh. An aside.

Several folks have suggested that I get in touch with the Minecraft community to let them know about the free Minecraft maps (plural—I have the space station about ready to go up, too).

I have no idea how to get the word out to Minecraft folks.

Do any of you?

The Morning After… WARPAINT now going out to second batch of readers

First, I apologize for the broken link. It’s the first time in more than a year that I’ve typed one in by hand, then failed to test it. So of course, it would die.

Second, in spite of the link typo, I have a couple more than nine volunteers to read WARPAINT.

So here’s what I’m going to do.

The first three readers are in on pure speed. You open the email that quickly, navigate past the broken link, and show up within a couple minutes of the post going live, you get to read.

Next two are in on speed of post plus best “Reason Why,” because the reason you want to do it matters a hell of a lot to me. So, working up the list from earliest to latest, I’m tapping the first two awesome-reason-why readers I come to.

Last four are in on speed plus something VERY specific. I need two readers who have already read HTCB, and I need two readers who have NOT read HTCB—and I’ll let these folks know especially why they were chosen, because I have the following questions I need to have answered. QUICKLY.

HTCB Readers:

1) Did WARPAINT answer questions raised but left unanswered by HTCB? If not, which questions remain?

2) Did you find any contradictions between the first and second books that were not answered in WARPAINT?

(The meaning here, wary reader, is that I built one core part of the plot on a contraction with the first book that came about when I realized I’d done something in the novel physics of HTCB that was a disaster (Novel physics, by the way, do not relate literally to physics. “Novel physics” is a shorthand for “this is the set of rules by which my story world works.”

In WARPAINT, I solve the disaster by showing and using the contradiction AND the disaster as part of the plot. So I don’t need to know about that one. But anything else, yes.)

Non-HTCB Readers:

1) At any point, did I lose you? If so, WHERE? (The book is intended to stand alone, and I need to make sure that it does.) Just one question, but I need to know every single place where I accidentally assumed knowledge from the previous book that you didn’t have so I can fix it. And I need to hear back on this VERY quickly, so if you’re not a fast reader, please let me know so someone else can step in and take your place.

Why Does SPEED MATTER So Much?

Because I need bug-hunting for the print version of WARPAINT by NEXT MONDAY, and for the ebook version of WARPAINT by next WEDNESDAY. (This is just no damn time at all, and I realize this, and I apologize.)

The folks here first demonstrated the ability to respond to urgency.

There’s a lot more time for folks who are reviewing, but for folks bug-hunting or answering questions, time is critical. I want to have live copies of the book available on all platforms for all readers starting to show up by the end of next week. And to actually be able to promo the book the first part of the week after. I want at least to have it live at LEAST a few days before Christmas.

The faster you can get a good list of bugs and some good answers to questions to me, the easier making that happen becomes.