many edits. such revision.

I’m trying to keep my nose to the grindstone while also being caught in this frustrating window of hurry up and wait.

I put in an order for a proof for MAGIC & MANNERS on the 6th and it still hasn’t arrived, so I went and looked up why and the damned thing says it’s still ‘pending’. I don’t understand why, unless I’m supposed to tell the system that it’s print-approved, except as far as I can tell that will propagate it into the publication system and I don’t want to do that until I’m sure the cover is okay. So I emailed them to ask what’s going on, but I’d really, really wanted it out this week and so I’m kind of sad and frustrated about that right now.

I’m also trying to get first-pass revisions done on a book I wrote almost 20 years ago. It’s interesting going back to it, because I can see a lot of what I was trying to do but wasn’t very good at, like some really terrible chapter transitions where I was clearly trying to inject drama and cut fat, but instead I injected confusion, even to myself (albeit, yes, 20 years later, but still). Other places I can see, again, what I was trying to do, but mostly it just needs to be rewritten entirely to achieve that. It’s like: “Good try, little writer.” And then there are the dialogue tags and adverbs, dear gods. But in a *few* places, it’s actually quite good. :) I thought I might be able to revise it all in two passes, but at this stage I’m afraid it’ll probably take three.

Anyway, I do have to get through the first pass this week so next week I can write the next Old Races short story next week. I’m at about 76K on the collection of pre-Negotiator-trilogy short stories, and would like somewhere between 85-100K to fill it out, so I’m like SO CLOSE on that that I can practically taste it, but I do have to get another…well, 1-4 stories, really, to reach that wordcount. If I didn’t already have 2 10K Biali stories in it I’d write another one of those to fill it out because apparently he lends himself to long stories. :) Anyway, this is a good time to mention it if you’ve got a particular pre-trilogy story you’d really like me to tell, because who knows, I might. (“Anything involving X” is not specific enough, and there are already 3 Janx & Daisani stories in the book, so unless you come up with something VERY clever for them I’m not likely to put a fourth in. :))

*stares at the to-do list* Yeah. So revisions, short story, and then I’d really *like* to hit that revision pass again before…doing more revisions. REDEEMER needs to be whipped into shape so I can submit it to my editor, and then I’ve got BEWITCHING BENEDICT to revise for hooooopefully a June publication. Maybe August. IDK.

I would really, really like to have all the heavy lifting on revisions done for EVERYTHING by the middle of the year so I can really concentrate on writing in the second half. But man, there’s a lot of work to be done.