last upload for The Moonstone (I hope)

Yesterday was my husband's and my anniversary. We had plans to go see A Dangerous Method, the movie about Jung and Freud. After that we were planning to go out to dinner.  But when I opened my mail the corrected proof of The Moonstone was there. Guess what we did with the rest of the day?

What boggles my mind is how many mistakes were still there after both of us going through it the last time! The funniest part was the chapter headings were all off--somehow I had two chapter 4's no chapter 3, two chapter 6's--How did that happen? I'm sure I went through the chapters before I uploaded the manuscript the first time. I now have high regard for line editors... In any case it took us all day and part of this morning to fill in the changes form and re-submit. I also decided to add more 'front matter' --excerpts from my one review.  I've noticed reviews in the first pages of several books I've read lately and thought it might be a good idea. I also added an icon to be put on the spine to go with my publishing name: Airmid Publishing. Several phone calls were made to Createspace to get all of this done. The next step will be receiving the book in the mail and approving it...

As we progressed through the book, I found myself wanting to ignore little things, like commas and so on, but in the end I corrected everything we found. Createspace is only as good as the editing done by the author-their job is to format what they receive. The changes form is tedious and time-consuming but it has to be done. The book is by no means perfect--it's wordy and I've repeated certain words too often, but...I'm putting it out there anyway. At least this time through I liked the story and thought the writing was all right, not like the last time when I contemplated re-doing the entire manuscript! The next book is better and the one after that is better still. It's time to launch the mewling baby.

This process will be easier the next time around. The second book of the series will be coming out in late June or early July...now on to marketing (ugh)

And, for those curious, we're planning our movie and dinner for Friday...