Hey, look at that! It’s already August.
If I haven’t been blogging or otherwise working the free ice cream machine much, it’s because I’ve been knee-deep in edits. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the process: you turn in your manuscript, and then your editor sends it back to you with, like, a thousand million comments and suggestions and requests, and then you go through the whole thing and change things around before sending it back AND THEN REPEATING THAT PROCESS MANY TIMES.
Alas, it is done (for now), and I’ve officially turned in the second novel in the Terms of Enlistment series. Now I get to finish my novella and then repeat the whole process for the third novel in the Series That Doesn’t Have A Name Yet. (My editor wanted to know if I had a title in mind, and I jokingly suggested “The Hunger Space Trilogy”.)
Now that I’m not on a super-tight deadline for a little while, I can get back to doing regular Interwebs business more frequently–you know, like writing blog posts or ANSWERING EMAILS. If you’ve sent me anything in the last month or so and haven’t received an expected reply yet, feel free to send it again because I most likely overlooked your email.
And now we do what we always do when a novel is finished. We fill up our pens, restock the fridge with Sweetened Caffeine Matrix, and do it all over again. Because being a writer is just like having homework every day!
Marko, could you please give us an update on the status of the novella “Measures of Absolution”? Your June 11 blog post said it would be published to Kindle and other ebook formats on August 8, but it doesn’t seem to exist in the Kindle Store. I understand that schedules sometimes have to change, and I’m just curious about what the new release date for this novella might be. Thanks.
Yup. I understand. Doing that now. Editor says “it should really be cut down by about a hundred pages…” I’m thinking…. no. Just do the copy editing the nuke typos and all. Waiting for a second opinion or three. If they all say the same thing, THEN the knives come out. Writing can be frustrating, but editing is like dancing naked through the briar patch, getting to the other side, and realizing you have to go back.
Oh yeah on the editing. I was so happy last month to think “Yeah, I’ve got everything done, now we can start the second paperwork round,” only to hear . . . “Sorry, [sucker], we’ve got to run it by a third person and see if they like it too. Send two copies in at the end of August (vacations, you know), and we’ll talk in late October or mid-November.” And people wonder why it takes so long to get a book from Major Publishers.
The endless homework thing turned me off of writing. Glad you stuck with it. I’m looking forward to the next novel in your hunger space trilogy.
Your Meat Loaf tweet confirms an obvious disdain for “Terms of Endearment”. Which emboldens me to ask why you so clearly referenced it in your book title. Sorry, but the question has haunted me since I first saw it, and every time since. James
A careful parsing of the plot shows that it is basically a point-for-point retelling of Terms of Endearment. Understand that Halley is John Lithgow’s character and it all falls into place.