So, I was like, Why don't I fix that pesky table of contents issue? That shouldn't take too long....

TWELVE HOURS LATER

OK, so it didn't take twelve hours, but it took a lot longer than it should have. What really took the time was just figuring out how the hell to do it--really and truly, and I say this as somebody who wasted a great deal of time trying to do it some other way, the only way is to download an HTML editor and take it from there. You need what are called anchor tags. If you download NVU like I did, it's super-easy, and the anchor tags are represented by cute little cartoon anchors. If you try doing it some other way (and really, the coding is no harder than what I use in this blog, so you should be able to), Kindle won't convert the code into an actual link. Instead, it will just leave the code there, because I'm sure readers are dying to learn about The Amazing Adventures of Href.

To complicate matters and increase author stress, neither Kindle nor Nook will show a working link in the preview. With Nook, you can download the final ePub version and check that, but with Kindle I have no freaking idea if the links in the table of contents work or not. They work in HTML. That much I know.

I just skipped Smashwords this time around because they want you to upload Word documents, and I have NO idea what would come out the other end if I did that. (ETA: Score one for Smashwords! They automatically create a linkable table of contents if your chapter heads begin with the word "chapter," as mine do. Definitely a good idea!)

In terms of things that took about as long as I thought they would, I downloaded some stock photos I can use to cobble together a new cover. I did hear back from that artist--he's going to think it over and get back to me reasonably soon. The thing is, one of the blogs agreed to review the book, and Norwescon is coming up, which hopefully will drive some traffic to Trang, so I think it's worth it to throw something together just for the e-books in case getting real cover art takes longer.

And although I didn't get any actual editing done on Trust, I woke up this morning with a great idea for the opening paragraphs just complete in my head. I love when that happens.