Death by Page Proofs

*falls over*





[Note: TOMORROW is when I will share
results from Friday's poll... I have tallied, but at work I have
better software for playing around with what I get]





So for the last week I've been
microscopically reading The Begonia Bribe... This is not my favorite
activity. For starters, page proofs are supposed to be fairly clean,
so when I find a mistake I feel guilty. Did I do this? Should I have
caught this earlier? (and I actually caught quite a lot—many more
than last time)





And reading so carefully has awoken my
inner insecure whiny baby. GADS! Is this GOOD ENOUGH to publish!?









See, this book was ALREADY challenging,
so maybe that is part of it. It was my second in the series... and
while I've written a trilogy, a series is a different animal. Each
needs to stand alone... So there is the careful balance of what goes
in and what doesn't so that new readers aren't lost, but repeat
readers aren't annoyed.... and there were the subplots... I made the
mistake in my early draft of front loading one of these and it pushed
the body back too far into the story... so then I had to rewrite the
darned thing... twice... Strangely, writing the 3rd was a
piece of cake by comparison (and my beta readers both independently
told me they thought it was the best of the three). But number 2
comes out first...





Another challenge: Penguin changed my
editor midway through... which is nobody's fault, not even the
Romans... but there are challenges related. I loved Emily, my old
editor. I love Michelle, my new editor. But I think changing captains
mid-stream just means there are some complications. The new one
doesn't know what the old one expected necessarily... and the ship
(that's me) has to get a feel for the new driver...





But now it is DONE!!!! And I am FREE!
Though working on a bloody holiday, which isn't my favorite thing.
See, the U gives us the week between Christmas and New Years in lieu
of a number of 3 day weekends and this is one of them. I don't get
another 3 day weekend until Memorial day *grumbles*