Almost There

There's a copy of my novel already on my coffee table. It's a proof--it will be a few more weeks before there's one on yours, but I hope you have enough interest to check it out when the time comes. Believe me, I shall let you know, here, on my website, on amazon dot com--and everywhere I can including the surrounding rooftops when it's ready.

I just got through the grueling process of process of reading, reading, finding little errors and big patches that needed rewriting. As I noted in the last post, my daughter looked through a proof copy like this one and gave me a list of places I must change. She also gave me a list of "should rewrite" sections. Most of these I've incorporated, but some will never happen. Exhaustion and an overwhelming burnout has got to me. There are times I wish I never had to think about the characters in this book again.

I hope I get my enthusiasm back by the time the perfected copies reach the bookstores. I hope I'll be able to give inspiring book talks, visit the haunts named in the book, talk with old people who remember what I do. This depends on the reactions when That Was Tomorrow comes out in paperback.

The surprising part of the process to me was the rewriting, based on typographical and careless writing errors. Just last night, thinking it was done, I employed "Find" on my Word document of the original copy and searched the word, "indeed." It turns out I used that word over 15 times in the novel, sometimes twice on the same page. I had already submitted a list of 55 errors to be corrected, but I revised the list adding at least 10 more (I decided a few of the "indeeds" could stand).

You never know what will come next. All these corrections may mean a new submission of the interior of the book, corrections made, or perhaps the designers can do it. With this many, I expect it to be the former. The book is already in electronic format--that is where several readers informed me of the corrections necessary. I'm afraid readers of that version will find a lot of "indeeds" as well as a jungle of misspellings and missing punctuation.

But the new book will be clean--and according to reactions so far, including my perfectionist daughter, a good read.