July in Review

July 31, 2015July 31, 2015 Kara JorgensenLeave a comment

Starting in January, I decided it would be a good idea to look back at each month and see what I have accomplished in my writing and marketing as well as reflect upon what needs to be improved in the future.

July was an oddly productive month. I’m still trying to wrap my head around how this happened, but I think a good part of it is that I participated in Camp NaNoWriMo, which forced me to be disciplined about my writing routine, and that I made sure to replenish my writing mojo by feeding my creativity with outings and good books.

What I did accomplish:

Wrote 20,000 words of The Earl and the Artificer (The Ingenious Mechanical Devices #3), which equates to about 5 chapters
Met my Camp NaNoWriMo word count goal + 5,000 words
Read Cold Magic (The Spiritwalker Trilogy, #1) by Kate Elliott and Indie Author Survival Guide by Susan Kaye Quinn
Finished proofing the audiobook for The Earl of Brass (IMD #1)
Got the ball rolling on the audiobook for The Winter Garden (IMD #2)
Fixed/”finalized” blurb for The Earl and the Artificer
Balanced writing, fun, and life better

Goals for August:

Write 15,000 words of The Earl and the Artificer
Finish and send “An Oxford Holiday” to my beta readers
Read 2-3 books
Build up my daily word count and work on a plan for when grad school classes start again
Continue to strive to write instead of striving for perfection

For once, I went above and beyond with my goals this month. Usually I find myself groaning when I reread my goals from the previous month because I’ve missed the mark on around half of them. In July, I exceeded my word count goal by 5,000 words, finished my audiobook (which should be available in a week or two), and was still able to read on the side. The Earl and the Artificer is finally cruising along and coming into its own (FINALLY). Seriously, this book was dragging so badly for a while, and it was all me. I needed to get my ducks in a row and really figure out where the story was going. By digging in and plowing through to meet my word count, there was no time to “get stuck” or make excuses as to why I wasn’t writing. Instead of taking a day or two to figure things I out, I consulted the color-coded outline I made and kept on going. One of the things that I think helped a lot was downloading one of these word count tracking spreadsheets. All you do is add the amount of words you wrote that day, and it takes it out of the your monthly or yearly goals. It’s a hundred times better than anything I could have made.

The downside to being so productive with book 3 is that I totally put “An Oxford Holiday” to the side. I’m still about 80% through it, but I need to take a day or two and wrap it before I give it a quick edit and send it off to the beta readers. It will be done by the end of August, but obviously the larger project takes precedence. I also need to convince my cover artist to make me a simplified cover for “An Oxford Holiday”.

This month I turned twenty-four, and I’m incredibly amazed by what I’ve done in the past year. Last year around this time, I had just published my first book and had no idea what I was doing. Now, I feel much more confident in my abilities, and I have two books out and four poems published in different literary magazines. Hopefully by the time I’m twenty-five, I’ll have at least three books out and a few short stories. It still amazes me how far I’ve come in a short space of time and how much I’ve learned. During the month, I hope to read Susan Kaye Quinn’s For Love or Money to add to my knowledge of author entrepreneurship.

While I’m looking forward to August and what I will hopefully accomplish, I know I have lost certain things to my goals. The main thing is cutting back on blog posts, but I’m pretty okay with that. People seem to be responding to my update posts as well as they did my other ones.

To wrap up, I have two posts to make note of:

I’m running a Goodreads giveaway of 2 paperbacks of The Earl of Brass and I did a guest post for the lovely Kate M. Colby about creating realistic characters.

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Monthly Review

June in Review

June 30, 2015June 30, 2015 Kara Jorgensen5 Comments

Sometimes it’s hard to be upbeat when you feel that you haven’t quite met your goals from the previous month. I don’t think I did as much writing of The Earl and the Artificer (Ingenious Mechanical Devices #3), but I’m okay with that because I did a lot more writing and tinkering with my short story “An Oxford Holiday,” which I am enjoying immensely. Now to get down to business:

What I did accomplish:

Wrote and edited two chapters of The Earl and the Artificer (IMD #3)
Wrote the majority of my companion short story “An Oxford Holiday”
Finished reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (if you have seen the thickness of this book, you’ll know why it’s an accomplishment)
Got out of the house more
Wrote or edited more days than I didn’t
Uploaded The Earl of Brass and The Winter Garden on iBooks, Nook, Kobo, Oyster, and other ebook platforms

Goals for July:

Finish “An Oxford Holiday” and ready it for publication
Plan and write more of The Earl and the Artificer
Blog more
Read 2-3 books
Stop making goals by the number (apart from reading goals)
Strive to write instead of striving for perfection

One of the things I have learned this month is that setting numerical goals drives me crazy. I had writers block for a good chunk of the month, and the longer it lasted, the more I focused on my previous goal of writing four chapters of my novel. Of course, the more I focused, the more I froze. To loosen up and break the block, I decided to work on a short story that was knocking on my brain and would come between books two and three. As soon as I began working on it, the words flew onto the page, and I was writing double what I wrote on my most productive day earlier in June. Immediately I began to wonder why “An Oxford Holiday” was taking shape so much faster than The Earl and the Artificer. Some obvious answers are length and complexity– since it’s a short story, both are a lot simpler than a novel. Was it the characters? While I love working with Adam and Immanuel, it shouldn’t make the story that much easier to write. The big difference between working on my for-fun short story and my novel was fun. Ever since I sent in my thesis proposal, I have been so hard on myself about The Earl and the Artificer, and it is sucking the fun out of the writing process. I’m constantly catching myself over-thinking scenes or freezing up because I’m worrying that it isn’t perfect. This is why my fifth and sixth goal are there. I need to stop over-thinking and making numerical goals because it’s apparent that I get fixated on them. After bouncing back and forth between my short story and the EatA without any pressure, I suddenly banged out a chapter in like two days.

The upside of June was that I had a great time and actually got out of the house. On the 20th, my boyfriend and I celebrated our tenth anniversary. We went down to a lovely waterfront town not far from our house, pigged out on pub food, French desserts, and sea air. It was wonderful. The same week my mom and I had a girl’s day, so I enjoyed spending an entire day with my mom and also made an impromptu stop at the bookstore. For once I actually spent time out of the house, and it seemed to revive my mood, especially after an incredibly stagnant first half of the month. Because of this slump, I may have bought a few too many books. Can you really have too many books? And I didn’t drain my bank account, so all is well.

I am so looking forward to finishing “An Oxford Holiday” in the coming weeks. It’s a short story that falls between books two and three, which I will be offering for free on all ebook platforms when it’s finished. The basic idea of the story is that Adam goes to visit Immanuel in Oxford as promised, but they soon realize that finding a place to spend time and speak freely is easier said than done. A bit of information will also be revealed regarding Immanuel’s life at Oxford and what his future with Adam holds. It’s just a little tidbit to hold my readers over between books, but I am greatly enjoying writing it. Hopefully you will enjoy it too.

One of the best things to happen this month is of course the supreme court ruling that gay marriage is legal in all fifty states. Living in New Jersey, I have taken it for granted, but I am so excited my southern or mid-western friends who thought having marriage equality in their state would be a pipe dream. As a supporter of gay rights, it made my day. The funny thing is, I bought this shirt in May and it finally arrived in mid-June. It says “I support LGBT lit” on the front and “Because everyone deserves to see themselves in fiction” on the back.

My hope for July is that I can finally put aside my perfectionist tendencies and be consistently productive or at least more productive than I have been. I think having a few chapters go smoothly will boost my confidence and hopefully produce more success in the future.

What are your goals for July?

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Monthly Review

May 2015 in Review

June 1, 2015June 1, 2015 Kara Jorgensen5 Comments

School’s out for summer! May has been the month of sweet freedom. Unlike April, which was stressful and made me want to tear my hair out, May has been lovely. Currently, I am at home except for one day a week where I work at my office job, and now I finally have time to write and read, which means, I can hopefully get a lot of work done in preparation for the fall semester. Yes, everything revolves around grad school… and writing, which is practically the same thing when you’re working toward an MFA in creative writing. Shockingly, I think I accomplished most of the goals I set last month.

What I did accomplish:

Finished my last bit of schoolwork and received good grades
Continued to blog and create a monthly newsletter
Wrote 2 chapters of The Earl and the Artificer
Edited The Earl and the Artificer
Read 3 novels, a novella, and a short story (and began Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell)
Didn’t stress out at the Steampunk World’s Fair

Goals for June:

Write 4 chapters of The Earl and the Artificer
Work on creating a routine to be able to write every day
Read every day
Continue to produce content for my blog and newsletter
Research marketing (possibly buy Susan Kaye Quinn’s marketing book)
Get out of the house more

The last goal may seem a bit odd, but as an only child who lives at home and has the summers off for the most part, I become a hermit– a cranky, bored, semi-delusional hermit by the end of the summer. Cabin fever does not help my productivity, so this summer I am hoping to maybe get out a bit more when possible. I’m hoping that on Thursdays when my boyfriend is home from work that maybe we can go to the beach and sit and write/draw by the water. We are also celebrating our 10th anniversary in June, and while we probably aren’t doing anything that spectacular, I am still amazed that we’ve been together this long.

Anyway, getting back to goals, I only wrote two chapters this month. Part of this was due to my transitional period between school and vacation and the rest was caused by my own confusion regarding my plot. That week between the end of the semester and vacation beginning was a sort of limbo for me. My brain was still in work-mode, but I didn’t have any work to do and my story was not coming to me because I had been pushing it away for so many weeks. At that point, it felt like all I could do was read and recover from a lovely cold I developed at the same time. The other issue was my confusion regarding the plot of my current project. From writing bits and pieces over the course of a few months during the semester and never truly focusing on my book, I had no idea really where the story was going apart from the major plot points. If I don’t know where I’m going, I end up not going anywhere.

A good chunk of May was devoted to rereading The Earl and the Artificer and plotting what points I covered and what points needed to be addressed in the next few chapters (introducing certain characters and facts). As I reread it, I edited what I had, tightening the plot and beefing up some of the descriptions and scenes. I must admit that I tend to panic when the beginning of a story takes me a while to get into. Somehow I forget that I do this with every book, but when the threads of the plot are incredibly loose and not yet knitting together I worry they never will come together. I keep reminding myself that they will. I just need time and words.

Right now, I’m hoping to sit down in the next day or two and loosely plot chapters 6-10 of The Earl and the Artificer, so I can get cracking for the rest of the month. Maybe I’ll even be able to slip in a short story for the Ingenious Mechanical Devices universe or possibly for an anthology I have been looking into. One thing I have noticed with my writing is that it tends to pick up when I’m reading an inspiring book. Currently, I am reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and I am loving it. It’s a huge book compared to what I usually read, but it’s moving quickly and I catch myself reading it as often as possible. Because of its size, I haven’t given myself a set number of books to read this month.

As a final note on May, I decided to run a sale where I set both books to 99 cents for a few days. I accidentally set it for Memorial Day weekend, and I’m not sure whether it was a good or bad thing because tons of authors planned sales for that weekend but it was the first official week of summer when people look for beach reading. At the same time, I ran an ad with Ereader News Today and sold quite a few copies of both books. Part of the reason I like to run sales is not necessarily to make money off of it (especially since the mark down obviously cuts my royalty) but to get my books into the hands of new readers. At 99 cents, readers are much more likely to take a chance on an unknown author, and after running the sale, I received a few more reviews and hopefully gained a few more readers along the way.

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Personal Life · Writing

The Steampunk World’s Fair

May 18, 2015 Kara Jorgensen2 Comments

On Friday, I attended the Steampunk World’s Fair for the first time and gave my first reading outside of the university. The SPWF was a blast. It was like stepping into an alternate reality. There were fantastic costumes everywhere, leather, brocade, rainbows, tulle. Women in corsets, men in waistcoats and gauntlets. The gamete ran from highly realistic to fantastical, and I don’t think there was a bad one in the bunch. Along with the fair-goers, there were also bands, panels (I attended a fantastic one about Edgar Allan Poe, which makes me really want to go to the Poe Museum), and shops. My boyfriend and I stopped at the haberdashery, and I finally got a pith helmet. What I find funny is that I always wanted a white pith helmet, and it turns out that the white ones are from the Anglo-Zulu War, which is mentioned in The Earl of Brass.

I ended up not getting too decked out this year. I went as a hybrid between modern and Victorian instead of all steampunk because, as the Awkward Authoress, I was afraid being in a full, rather uncomfortable costume would set my anxiety off. It’s amazing how clothing choice can aggravate anxiety. Instead I wore my corset, black pants, and a biker jacket. Probably a bit more cyberpunk than steampunk, but I was comfortable in my own skin and actually enjoyed myself.

My reading itself went a little less smoothly. I ended up being scheduled at midnight as one of the last events of the night, and by then, most of the fair-goers had cleared out apart from the night-owls and revelers. It made me wonder if I screwed up AM/PM on my sign-up papers. Either way, I wasn’t expecting a crowd since I’m a brand new author with a small following. I knew three people were coming for sure, but I was quite pleased to see a few more come. The weirdest part was that my anxiety really wasn’t too bad. I made myself a little outline of what I wanted to cover before I gave my reading, and while I didn’t have a podium, my audience was very attentive and forgiving of the late hour. Then, it got weird.

What I can only describe as a New Orleans style band marched past my door followed by a parade of revelers from the courtyard. I could feel myself beginning to sputter. The band was so loud that I had to stop and wait for them to pass and ended up losing my place. Of course my stress level jumped, and I was embarrassed that I had to stop my entire program for a few minutes. Then, I said to myself, “Would it be better to pretend the band wasn’t there and shout over them?” No, it wouldn’t have worked anyway. As my aunt said when I told her, this would only happen to me. If something weird is going to happen, it’s probably to me, and a brass band marching through during my reading was not something I anticipated. Oh well.

The best part of the night was that a reader vacationing from Canada came to the fair and attended my reading. I knew she was coming since we message back and forth on Facebook, and she brought me a bag of goodies from Canada. All of the nights woes and anxieties melted away. It didn’t matter that the band played over me because someone actually: A) cared enough to come B) wanted to hear me read C) brought me a present when she obviously did not have to. I’m eternally grateful to her because she was able to squelch all of my fears and regrets and ended my night on a high note. Thank you so much, Lois!

Either way, if you ever want to do a reading or present somewhere, take a chance. Even if the night went a bit awry, it was worth it to get the experience under my belt.

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Writing

5 Tips for Beating Writers Block

May 8, 2015May 8, 2015 Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

Sorry for not blogging sooner, but I have been under the weather for the past week. Today’s post will be about the dreaded writers block.

Writers block can be one of the most crippling experiences for a writer, and after experiencing a bout of this recently myself, I thought I would post a few tips that may help to get through it.

Ask, “Would your characters actually do this?” Sometimes being stuck is caused by something as simple as trying to force a scene. Step back for a minute and think about how the scene can be reworked. Is your character doing something out of character? This can be the bane of a plotter’s existence because they have their outline and want to stick to it, but at times, a character can be whispering to you that they don’t want to or wouldn’t do what you are intending them to do.
Free write. Is another story knocking at your brain but you’re 2/3 into another one and don’t want to give up on it or throw yourself into a new project? Take a few minutes to let the scene out. Save the file in a separate folder of scraps or future projects and let it go. You can always revisit it when you’re finished with your current project, but for now, it’s out of your brain and on paper for later.
Make an outline. Sometimes you need to see it on paper to get going. It’s often a case of where have I come from and where am I going? Draw out what you have thus far and then where you know you have to go. Typically, I use a blank sheet of printer paper and a brightly colored pen to stimulate ideas and remove constraints (no idea why it works but it seems to). Don’t put the future points too close together, leave space to fill-in with ideas. What do your characters need to do and how do we get them there?
Look for visual inspiration. You have ideas, you know what you need to do, but the spark just isn’t there. Try going onto sites like Pinterest or Tumblr and looking for pictures that have to do with your story. If it’s set in the Victorian era, look up historical photos or vintage clothing. Is there a celebrity who looks like your characters? Look them up. Throughout the writing process, I create a Pinterest board of inspiration and look to it when I’m feeling stuck or meh about my writing.
Read. One of the best pieces of writing advice I have ever gotten is to read. Reading will not only stimulate ideas, but it will be a refresher for craft. How does the author get to the climax? How are the characters built with depth and how do we find out about them? Read authors who inspire you and see how they did it. Learn from the masters, and let their words power yours.

Hopefully this helps you in your writing. The block is often caused by stress or fatigue and not laziness on the author’s part, but when you feel stuck, try some of the tips mentioned above and see if they help get you through. If nothing else, go for a walk and clear your head.

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Monthly Review · Writing

April 2015 in Review

May 1, 2015April 30, 2015 Kara JorgensenLeave a comment

April was a crazy month. At the university, it’s crunch time for papers and projects along with a deluge of events. I think I spent more time at the university than I ever have in my past year and a half there. With all of these extra curricular activities, I was a tad stressed out. Okay, a lot stressed out, which led to me buying quite a few books. I have no shame regarding that, but I don’t think I should have rewarded myself for not getting as much done as I hoped.

What I did accomplish:

Finished reading for class and turned in portfolio
50% done with final paper (I’ve been bad about finishing this)
My thesis portfolio was accepted
Learned more about marketing by reading Joanna Penn’s How to Market a Book and Tim Grahl’s Your First 1000 Copies
Scheduled a 99 cent sale for The Earl of Brass from May 22nd-26th
The Winter Garden has 6 Amazon reviews and 7 Goodreads reviews
Sent out my first newsletter

Goals for May:

Write 3-4 chapters of The Earl and the Artificer
Do a preliminary edit on the chapters I write
Read 3-4 books at least
Stay positive and work on stress (as always)
Do well with my reading at the Steampunk World’s Fair
Get my art commission done

I think I’m most excited about the last one. One of my favorite artists opened her commissions again, and I jumped at the chance to get one. At first, I was wait-listed, but she added more slots to allow me a few others to get in. I won’t give too many details, but it will be Adam and Immanuel from The Winter Garden. As much as I’m looking forward to (and dreading) the Steampunk World’s Fair, I am super excited about more artwork of my characters. The date and time of my reading at the Steampunk World’s Fair will come in a few days. They’re still working on the schedule.

Anyway, April has been a difficult month for me. Everything was due for class, so I quickly polished off the books I needed to read and started my papers and portfolios. This means I have only been able to write one chapter. Luckily, by the end of the first week of May I should be able to really get back into writing book three. In my last post, I discussed how book three has been my problem child, and it really has been. For me to write, I need to figure out what story within all of my random ideas I would truly like to read. Otherwise, the book is stilted and just not fun to write. After having a discussion in the car with my boyfriend last night, I feel that I have a better handle on where it’s going. I’m sure I’ll still pester my bestie some time this weekend about it.

I know I’ve set myself a somewhat rigorous schedule for May in terms of writing, but I think with time on my hands and a plan, I can get through at least three chapters. I tend to be a slow writer because I hem and haw over every word, yet I’ve gotten through that much before in a few weeks when I was really determined. The hidden “to-do” is to figure out the rest of my major plot points and get maybe the next five chapters mapped, so I can hit the ground running when I start writing in the next few days.

Last month, I gave myself the goal of working on managing my stress. I didn’t. I was a mess this month. Part of me doesn’t want to rely on excuses, but this month was insane. It seemed like I was constantly on the go. I was definitely stressed out, so much so that I threw my body out of whack. I really don’t want that to happen in May, so I will try to take things as they come and not freak out. This is partially why I gave myself the goal of reading a few books this month. I need to take time to read something good to engage my mind and imagination and to unwind a bit. Reading always helps me focus and inspire my writing. Some books I’m hoping to get through are: The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters, A Case of Possession by K. J. Charles, Auraria by Tim Westover, and Possession by A. S. Byatt. It’s an eclectic mix, but I’m dying to get to them.

So what are your goals for April?

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Writing

Rediscovering My Inner Reader

April 24, 2015April 23, 2015 Kara Jorgensen5 Comments

One of the things I remember clearly about my senior year of high school was how many books I read. I devoured book after book. Mysteries, suspense thrillers, classics, it didn’t matter. If I owned it, I read it, and I plowed through my to-be-read pile faster than ever. Then college happened. A double major, papers, assignments, studying anatomy and novels, and taking between six and eight classes a semester took their toll. When could I squeeze in time for reading? I couldn’t. Even the summers I used to get ahead in my fall literature classes. Reading for fun was but a memory.

In November, the little nagging voice in the back of my head began to call out, “Read something! Read something!” So of course, I started to sort through my books for grad school and realized I had finished my reading list early. With a pang of guilt, I picked up a book I had been meaning to read since I got it for my birthday. It was the first time I had read a book during the school year in ages. It was like a sigh of relief. No having to constantly analyze the text (though I tend to do that passively anyway), no deadlines, no books I didn’t want to read.

When the semester at the university began again, I thought that was the end of my pleasure reading since I surely wouldn’t have time for it. Most people who stop reading for pleasure say it’s due to a lack of time, but I began to find times when I could read the books I wanted. Here are some ideas for reviving your inner reader:

Read during your commute. Thinking back to senior year of high school, I realized a lot of my reading was on the bus to and from school. Nowadays, I drive myself to the university, so sadly, there’s no reading during my commute, but if you take a bus or train to work or school, bring a book.
Before bed. An oldie but a goodie. You know when you’re playing on your computer when you know you’re past the point of doing anything productive and even Candy Crush is beyond your capabilities? Put the computer away and settle into bed maybe half an hour earlier than usual. It’s amazing how thirty minutes can accumulate into a book or two a month.
Get a Kindle or a Kindle app for your phone. It can be hard to tote around a hard cover or even a paperback novel, but with a Kindle or Kindle app for your phone, your library is always on hand. If you have some free time on your lunch break or between tasks, you can open your book and continue where you left off. You’d probably reach for your phone anyway when boredom sets in, so why not read? Some books even let you download the ebook for free if you buy the paperback, which means you can read it even if you accidentally left the paperback at home.
Read a book you actually want to read. Not to be a hipster, but I rarely like the books everyone is clamoring about. Twilight? Hated it. 50 Shades? Pointless. A Discovery of Witches? Not my taste. Instead of reading what everyone else is reading or what your friend suggested, go to the bookstore (or Amazon) and look for a book that actually catches your interest. You can also preview a book on Amazon, so if you start reading it and are hooked, download it. Nothing is worse than trudging through a book you hate, and it’s much easier to get into a book and make time for it when you actually want to read it.
Read in the bathroom. I can already hear the resounding ewww. Do you go on Facebook or Twitter on your phone while you’re doing your morning routine or are taking a bath? If so, then get on that Kindle app. I’m a supporter of bathroom reading. As a caveat, I only read MY books in the bathroom, no books borrowed from friends are allowed. That’s just part of the book borrower’s honor code.

Most of these are really simple and probably very obvious, but as someone who read over a thousand pages over the course of two months by reading at night, in the bathroom, and between tasks, I can say that it all adds up. At the end of the day when you think you’re too mentally exhausted to do anything, you may find that reading will actually reduce stress and help to settle you down for the night.

The TL;DR version is find a book you want to read and you’ll find that there are gaps in your day when you can squeeze in reading, you just have to want to do it.

Writing

Am I a Poly-reader?

April 12, 2015April 11, 2015 Kara Jorgensen2 Comments

For most of my life, I have considered myself a monogamous reader and writer. I’ll plow through one book at a time, no matter how painful or long it is. Occasionally exceptions would be made for short stories or poems I needed to read for class (one deals with these things often as an English major), but I would take novels one at a time.

Then, grad school happened. Looking back now, I wonder how I was able to finagle it that I rarely had to worry about reading two novels simultaneously as an undergrad, but in grad school, I have found it is next to impossible to anticipate what you will end up reading for class. Continue reading “Am I a Poly-reader?” →

Writing

February 2015 in Review

March 2, 2015 Kara Jorgensen4 Comments

February was a meh month for all of my work. While I finished the formatting for The Winter Garden in ebook and paperback and was able to move up the release date to March 15th, I didn’t get much done in terms of book three. I did make a little progress with all of my projects. Maybe part of the problem is that my hands and mind are in too many places at once.

What I did accomplish: Continue reading “February 2015 in Review” →

Writing

The Importance of Proofing

February 23, 2015 Kara JorgensenLeave a comment

I had a minor rude awakening this weekend. My proof copy of The Winter Garden came last weekend, so I decided I would give the book one more round of proof-reading to find some leftover typos and make sure everything was in order. I quickly found out, it was not perfect.

Somehow italics in certain chapters magically disappeared. No idea how it happened, but somewhere between the original file and the paperback, half the italics in the book did not translate. Luckily, I discovered the issue Saturday night and fixed it using Word’s compare draft feature along with control-find. At times, I wish I didn’t reference so many books or have my characters think so much, but the issue did make me very aware of what nearly skated under my quality-control radar.

This is why when you create a paperback, they send you a proof-copy to check over. At first, I didn’t notice it because half the book had italics (sprinkled throughout), but chapter two didn’t along with many others. Comb through your manuscript with eagle eyes. Take your ebook or original copy and compare it to your paperback because that is how issues like this are spotted. I didn’t notice it until I was correcting typos and had my Word file for the ebook and paperback editions both open and saw that a book title wasn’t italicized.

Apart from the italics issues, I also caught quite a few typos or awkward phrasings that were easily smoothed. Proofing is a time to put the final polish on your novel and make sure everything is up to snuff. Luckily, now it is all fixed, though I’m sure I’ll find more silly errors within the coming months, but the issues have been caught and the both formats have been finalized for publication.

What am I going to do with the 35 days between now and March 31st when The Winter Garden is released? Hopefully work on book three. More about that will come as I get further into it.