I *finally* got the proof for MAGIC & MANNERS (the freaking delivery service couldn’t find our Giant Invisible House). It’s extremely, extremely pretty, except it has precisely the error I feared it would:
See that thin blue line alond the spine side? That’s the spine color, and it’s not supposed to be there. (There’s one on the back, too.) The system’s template was confusing, and the cover artist made the same error I would have. The PDF proofs showed that blue line, but it was possible it was just a problem with the PDF, so I had to order a copy to see if it actually printed that way.
Obviously it did.
On one hand, I’ve seen plenty of books that have that kind of printing error. OTOH, they drive me insane. :) And since I *can* fix it, I’m going to. In fact, in a fit of efficiency I’d talked to the cover artist weeks ago and she’d sent me a fixed copy…except we both forgot it had to be a PDF, not a JPG, so I don’t actually have a copy I can upload tonight. Tomorrow, then, and it’ll head in for Availability the very moment it can.
I’ve gotten the e-book proofs, too, and have gone over them with as many different devices as I can, finding a small but interesting variety of Different Viewing Errors as I did so. Those have been reported to the digital conversion lady, so things continue apace. This book production thing, folks, it’s hard work. But the finished product is really startlingly lovely. I keep being astonished by it!
I finished what is technically-still-a-short-story-at-7250-words for the Patreon crew, although I had reason to be grateful it was a leap year, else I’d not have finished it in February. I’m pleased with how it turned out, and I almost certainly can round out the collection with two more stories but I’m afraid I have ideas for four and I’m not sure what I’m going to do about that.
The half-revised old novel has gone off to the Very Forgiving Cover Artist, who promises she isn’t judgy at all and will only read it for its book-cover-qualities, not its, well, half-revised state, so that’s quite exciting. That’s going to be an ebook-only release at first, until (quite frankly) I can get some money in the bank and be able to pay for things like book design and full cover art. There *will* be a print edition, though, because, well, let’s be frank: because I want one on my shelves. :) But I’m genuinely looking forward to that, because I’m actually having a lot of fun revising it.
So, in short: the next month is going to be very busy with the writing of a couple of short stories and a *great* deal of revising, because there’s IB *and* REDEEMER to get revised, the latter to send to the editor, and then of course there’s BEWITCHING BENEDICT, which I…will not, realistically, get revised in March. Not without a miracle.
And in totally not-writing-news, after I’d said on Twitter that gosh, maybe I should just get a second copy of the Dark Horse Original Quest reprint to scan and color as I saw fit, look what a friend sent me:
ONE OF THOSE PENCILS IS THE COLOR OF LEETAH’S HAIR, PEOPLE!
I sat down and started coloring the first page *immediately*. Young Indiana, who had said, “ANOTHER copy of that book?!” when I opened it, then gasped, genuinely shocked, “*Mommy*! We don’t color in WORD BOOKS!!!” I said he was right, but that this was a special extra copy of the book that someone had given me *just* so I could color in it. He relented, albeit somewhat suspiciously. :)
I have not, to my embarrassment, managed to color in the whole first page yet, even though it arrived YESTERDAY. :)