My last post I did mention that I was in the semi-last stages of editing the new book. I’m about a third of the way through it, and hope to finish this phase this week. On top of that, I have a few minor developmental changes to make based on some feedback from some people who were nice enough to read it in its unfinished state. They haven’t died or stopped talking to me, so that’s a good sign. Releasing soon!

I’ve been thinking about the editing process itself. After you’ve written your 95,000 word novel, and gone back through it and rewritten chunks and fiddled around with the words, you pass it off to an editor. In this case, I sent it to Scarlett Algee, introduced to me by Nathan Hystad whom I worked with on the last Explorations anthology. It was fun, and Scarlett was pretty swell to work with. [I’m not sure she’s keen on being associated with this project yet, but I should ask her about that before I push publish. Oops.] She took my manuscript, read it, marked it up and returned it to me in just under a couple of weeks. She is like some kind of word and punctuation machine and I’m really impressed with the quality and speed of her work.

While this all feels like an eternity to me, having committed to releasing back in January, then giving February a miss, now onto mid-April, it’s made me realize that the much-maligned Traditional Publishing industry has one thing right: These things take time. Typically, a traditionally-published novel spends a full year in development with a variety of editors, proof-readers and loops back to the author. I’m giving it a couple of months. And I’m doing a lot of it myself. Formatting, proofing, layout, … Some of that shit is really fiddly – and a pain in the ass, to be quite honest. It is the main reason I haven’t released a print copy of Trajectory Book 2 yet: I can’t bring myself to put it together in InDesign.

But I will. Over the next couple of months, while the new book is percolating on the shelves, I intend to get a bundled edition of Book 1 and 2 together with a print version. I think it’s worth it. People have complained about the truncated ending in Book 1 and I think that’s valid. “It feels like this was just cut off from a larger book” is an exactly correct criticism. You caught me! Release early, release often, we used to say in the software industry.

While all that’s happening, I just put the pen cap on after an 11,000 word short story and have begun plotting and outlining for Book 4. It’s easy to make a lot of work for yourself without really trying.

That’s enough procrastination. Back to work.

PS, if you have read either of the Trajectory Books, or any other indie author’s work, and haven’t left a review, please take a second to drop some stars on them. Stars and reviews help us stay visible. Thank you!