Book 15 is nearly here! Have you signed up for the newsletter? If so, you’ll get the link in there around 6 am Sunday morning. I’ll wake myself up later in the morning and post the link here on the blog and on the FB Bellingwood page. Whee!
Oh, I’m liking this book. (Good thing, eh?)
The final edit arrived in my inbox this morning and it was awesome. I have to tell you – my editors / beta readers are pretty amazing people. Each one sees something different and makes these books better before you see them.
I was desperately out of clean clothes , so I packed things up and dashed out to deal with it this afternoon. Nothing more fun than sitting in a laundromat, right? Okay, there are always interesting people, but not when your mind is harassing you about all that needs to happen before midnight Saturday night.
So, ummm, yeah … took my little moleskin notebook in with me and wrote the vignette. I was proud of me.
Now it is time to format the book for paperback first … and then for Kindle. Why that way? Well, are you sure you want to know? Alright. You asked for it.
When you format for paperback, you need to be wary of widows and orphans. Pretty biblical, yes?
No.
A reader’s eyes do not like a widow (single line at the bottom of a page), but even less, does the reader like an orphan (just a couple of words at the top of a page). So … I go through the book page by page and restructure things to eliminate as much of that as possible. The other thing that is generally considered unacceptable is leaving only a few lines at the end of a chapter.
I do that work first, because it often requires editing. Then I move the manuscript to Kindle so that they are identical. With the Kindle, page length doesn’t matter because you all use different fonts and font-sizes when you read. I can’t control what you do with those things, so I don’t even try. (Duh)
There are a lot of little processes involved in taking my story from manuscript to book. I have a checklist that I’ve created over the years to ensure that all of the parts and pieces happen. It’s so much fun, but it does take time. I’ll be up late tonight and work all day tomorrow and late into the evening tomorrow night, but I promise you’ll have a book on your Kindle on Sunday.
Back I go … love you all!
