Another Week, Another 15K Words

 
I just finished 15023 words for the week. And it's only about 3 pm Friday afternoon.
 
I've very excited. I'm jittering.
 
I'm literally just a few words away from finishing chapter 18 of Gunwitch. I will definitely have this novel finished before the end of next week. Maybe even by Wednesday. And my new estimate for the final word length is just below 100K. My estimate keeps shrinking. I'm not as wordy as I expected to be, somehow.
 
The only somewhat sobering thought in my head is: Come February, my weekly quota moves to 20K words. Even after 2 weeks of 15K words each, 20K words in a week still seems like a challenge. But it's a challenge that also still excites me.
 
In other news, I spent the week battering my head against opaque, unspecified spine text issues with CreateSpace. They give us a cover template to use, and we follow that template (the artist and I). Then they reject the cover with vague, imprecise complaints. We shrink the spine text well past their stated requirements, and they reject it again. Once more into the font reducer, and they still reject it. After the 3rd time, I sent messages to their support team and they eventually approved the 3rd version. But they still won't tell me the specifics of why they rejected it in the first place.
 
Does their template need updating in some way? Are their posted specifications out of date? How did The Summoning Fire get through the process on one try with an edge-to-edge spine logo when both The Girl Who Ran With Horses and Demon Candy get arbitrarily rejected time and again? Who knows? I sure as hell don't.
 
Does Amazon have another, different, more responsive print-on-demand service I can use instead of CreateSpace???
 
So, because of all that, I don't have much news about Demon Candy. I'm waiting for the proof copy to arrive. Then we can make sure the interior illustrations look as good as they can and get on with this new book release thing we've been wanting to do all week.
 
Have a great weekend!
 
-David