Update: Still working on Sekaran, but it’s not my fault

Last week I said, somewhat seriously, that I might go ahead and send Sekaran to the next few early readers and proofreaders now, with scattered notes in the file such as

This Chapter Still In Progress

And the fact is, I am almost certainly going to do that today or maybe tomorrow, because every time someone makes a suggestion, such as, “I would love to see more about Gedasares and his decision to keep Kelleos and renounce his right to the throne,” or “You remember when Aras said he was once seriously ill and the Golden Invocation didn’t work on him? I’d like to see that,” all those suggestions strike me as irresistible. Thus I keep adding to this book, which is at 140,000 words now and still going.

And this is fine! It’s no problem! It’s the opposite of a problem! Except I’ve set the preorder date for November 2 at Amazon, which means no later than Oct 15 at my Patreon, which means I better get cracking with tweaking and proofreading even though this will overlap more than usual with actually writing bits of the draft. At least it’s easy to write chapters out of order, since each chapter is distinct.

FAQ: What happens if you miss the preorder date?

I doubt that is actually a frequently asked question BY READERS, but I would bet that most authors who are self-publishing have occasional reason to nervously look into this, so I’ll tell you: Officially, KDP zaps your ability to set any preorders for a year. Unofficially, I hear you can ask them pretty please to restore your ability to set preorders and they will probably say okay and cancel the penalty. However, this is obviously not something to experiment with for no good reason.

Should this turn out to be a problem at all, then there’s a way to finesse the situation: release the book at Patreon and Amazon at the same time, BUT uncheck the KU box so the book does not go live in KU right away. As long as it isn’t live in KU, there’s no need for the ebook to be exclusive.

However, the idea is to keep to the early-release-at-Patreon thing, and that will happen UNLESS PEOPLE KEEP SUGGESTING NEW CHAPTERS and then, while this remains great, I’m not sure about the early part of this plan.

As a side note, I also said last week that if, after this book is published, people ask for other missing scenes, then if those scenes strike me as fun to write, I’ll write them and drop them in my newsletter. This goes for basically any notion that strikes a reader about any book. I don’t promise to write whatever scene / chapter / story gets suggested because who knows, I might not be able to write it for whatever reason. But everyone is welcome to suggest ideas. Marag came from that kind of suggestion, after all, and This Hour appeared because, much as with Sekaran, I meant to write something short for my newsletter, and on we go.

MEANWHILE

I finished Hemlock and Silver, so a post about that is scheduled for later this week. Fun novel, I really enjoyed it, and thanks to commenter Robert who urged me to read it in terms that made me actually, you know, read it.

I’m now in the middle of this Pride and Prejudice fanfic novel that was self-published some time ago, Unequal Affections, by Lara Ormiston. This is the one where Elizabeth accepts Darcy’s initial proposal and then the story moves on from there. Someone here mentioned it a while ago and I picked up a sample and found myself in the mood for that this past weekend. It’s excellent, very true to the style, characters, and world of the original. Major kudos to the author.

What are you all reading right now? (I really shouldn’t ask because I bet you’ll tell me and then I’ll be adding yet more books and samples to my tottering TBR piles, but even so, I hope you’re all reading something good!)

MEANWHILE

OMG this drought. All the trees are either being forced into dormancy or dying outright – we’ll find out which fall into which category next spring – and not only does this force me to spend time watering (the lucky young trees and shrubs that are within four hose-lengths of my house; all the others are on their own), but also this means the dead leaves are falling off the trees and the dogs are bringing them into the house by the bushel. And it’s only going to get worse, arrgh. I’m not posting a picture of any trees or other plants because it’s just too horrifying. Just picture them all withering, with the deer desperately nipping the heads off any flowers you’re watering because they don’t have a lot of other stuff to eat right now.

I got a second robot vacuum cleaner, so I can I set one to run in the morning and then turn the other loose two hours later when leaf debris is once again everywhere. I could in theory run one about every four hours all day, as long as I was home to put one on the charger and bring the other one upstairs. Or I can set one to run upstairs and one downstairs. Or I can turn them both loose at once upstairs. I’m tempted to get a third purely to enhance the appearance of a swarm of robot vacuum cleaners all buzzing around like little bees, because I think it would be funny.

I’m renewing my request for someone to invent a little drone that flies around and dusts all horizontal surfaces and random dusty objects in the house. Some clever person really needs to get on that. I’m not kidding.

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