Sweet Acceptance

this is not me, btw

Well, the page proofs for STATE OF DECAY are in and it seems all went well.  The process for that was fairly simple: I received a package in the mail that contained the book printed out on paper (two book pages to one sheet) and then read through it looking for typos etc.  When I found one, I made a note in the margin.  Then I converted the corrected pages to .pdf format and emailed them back.  There were very few errors (an extra hyphen here, a period that should have been a comma there) and I was even allowed to sneak in two or three very small changes that I was afraid they might beat me for (changing text is strongly discouraged at this phase – in fact if you do too much and cause over 10% of the book to need resetting, you’ll actually get charged for it) but they didn’t.

Not long afterward, I got word from my agent Jack Byrne that Book Two (THE SILENT ARMY, or whatever the final title ends up being) has been officially accepted and the advance check is en route.  So, I have gleaned from this that my editor Jessica Wade has read the ms at this point and deemed it somewhere between acceptable and awesome.  I think if I lived in New York I would bring Jessica a Cinnabon now and again and get the low down on these things but since I don’t I have to resort to email and the occasional Tweet.  Unfortunately, I have a difficult time understanding Twitter I think and therefore I really, really suck at it.

So – STATE OF DECAY is in the pipe.  THE SILENT ARMY is gearing up for edits probably in the next couple months, and I’m closing in on a final of ELEMENT ZERO.  It’s strange but as much work as this has been and as much work as it will continue to be, I’m already getting the sense I will miss these characters.  I might have to write a side story or two…what happens to the characters between book 1 and 2, that sort of thing.  We shall see.

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