August Wrap-up

Well, after many, and I mean 50+ hours, of messing with the input and formatting of the book Of Monsters & Madmen in temperatures hovering around 90 degrees F (air conditioner downstairs in office has about given all it can in the old house and is just waiting for the Reaper. I wonder if an air conditioner goes to hell if it works better or worse there?), I hope to put the final touches on the book tonight so I can send it off and wait for the galleys. Of course the final touches won't happen until the day job is done, which is normally a minimum of 10 hour days, but today it will be closer to 12 hours.

What have I learned from this project? I know what to expect and some of the little things that need to be prepped in advance for next time, If I do something like this again it will be me providing all of the elements to someone who is more experienced and quicker at dealing with formatting. After the number of hours I've put in that could've been spent writing, it would be worth paying someone with more skill and time.

Speaking of more writing, when not at my home office I have had time to write about 30,000 words over the past week, making for one (re-written from scratch) short story and one novella that are part of a themed collection that I pitched to one of my publishers some time back. Revisions have been made on all but the re-written story, so here's hoping in a week or so I'll have everything ready to go.

The re-written story is due to losing all versions of the original, which I wrote two years ago. The computer it was on died more than a year ago and the flash drive it was on literally got crushed and destroyed. The cloud I had it on when through a revamp I wasn't aware of and somehow it was lost in cyberspace. I had hoped, as a last resort, I had sent it to a friend/beta reader, but no such luck. So I quit wasting time looking for the story and just rewrote it, changing the characters and location up but keeping the plot similar to what I could recall. It's a zombie story, so it was sort of like reviving the dead and giving it a new unlife.

Learned today that I have been selected as one of the screenwriters to beta test the new Final Draft 10, so that will give me some extra stuff to do that should be fun and, hopefully, productive.

I'll be at Fencon in Dallas September 23-25, 2016. The following weekend I will be at Archon in Collinsville, IL (Near St. Louis) so if you're nearby, come to the show, say hi, listen to some readings, enjoy panels and buy some books.