Progress report

I did the beta edits for the first three chapters of Trials. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but it was probably the majority of the work, because a lot of the questions were about background—how is the station laid out? what do the Snake Boys look like? where do the Portal Aliens live? why is Creepy the former Host messiah?—which is great, because obviously I’m super-familiar with all of that, but anyone who hasn’t read the two earlier books, like, VERY recently isn’t going to be.

There was also an objection to the specific manner in which two of the human characters insulted each other that I really liked, because I’d been feeling like Trang’s being multi-lingual had been sort of dropped in this book, so now they are insulting each other in French. Which always makes me happy.

Progress report

I wasn’t really able to focus on Trials today, although I did get some good ideas last night. Instead I proofed the bonus content for the World War II letters, which are titled (horn toots pretentiously) A Dislocated World: Letters from a World War II Surgeon. I put the cover on the home page, too.

Progress report

I went through the beta reads today for Trials—I think I might let things marinate and work on them tomorrow. It’s kind of what I expected—both readers have read the earlier Trang books, but it’s been a really long time (I asked them to please NOT refresh their memories), so there’s a lot of questions about the basic setting and situation. So I’m going to try to figure out a way to bulk that part out a bit without making it too much of an information dump.

Progress report

I was going to start work on the Trials beta reads today, but I didn’t sleep well last night, so instead I went over the introduction & informational bits I put into my grandfather’s letters and did the front & back matter. Because it’s nonfiction, I am doing a bibliography, but because it’s not academic writing, I’m not footnoting or anything. I actually pondered doing an index for about three seconds before I remembered that it’s going to be an e-book and people can use the “search” function.

Progress report

Today was kind of a blah day—didn’t sleep well, had other things to do, etc.—so I just finished out Part 1 and called it good.

By the way, the beta readers are all done with Trials, which is awesome. I’ll look at that after I send the letters off.

I was thinking about it last night and was actually pretty pleased to realize that I’m not going to have a huge doubling of production tasks, because I’ll be laying Trials out but not the letters, and I’ll be putting up the photos and whatnot from the letters here, but not doing that for Trials. So at least it won’t be super-repetitive.

Progress report

So, I’m doing basically the final pass over the letters before I send them off to a beta reader, who will hopefully let me know if my explanatory additions & edits work. I’m also taking a crack at things like getting the names consistent—I don’t know if it is a good thing or a bad thing that my grandfather & I clearly shared an inability to spell or remember names, but I do feel a deep sense of connection with him on this front. Also he tends to list the bazillion things he is doing, and then complain that he’s getting no work done—because “work” = “surgery” to him. For better or for worse, I feel the same way about writing.

Anyway, today I did the introduction & most of Part 1.

Progress report

I read over Part 4 and input the changes! Whoo!

So, that’s a big hunk of the work done. (!!!) I’m going to go over it and make consistent things like dates & times & military titles. (Except now I’m pretty sure I lent my AP Stylebook & Chicago Manual of Style before I moved. Shit!)

Progress report

All right! I have input the changes for the second half of Part 2 and read over Part 3. Part 4 is the last part, so I also made the file, although it needs to be gone over before I even print it out.

Progress report

Part 2 is even longer than Part 1, so I read & input changes just for the first half of it. That was a lot easier on me than doing the same job all day—I need to change position more. The new place has a smaller office, so I’ve only had my regular desk chair out, but today I finally pumped up the old ball chair. Having two different chairs makes the office look crowded and messy, but it will be worth it to be able to work long hours and still have feeling in both feet….

Progress report

I input the changes to Part 1, which seems to have taken forever. I’ve printed out Part 2 to go over—I may get to that today, I may not.

It’s odd to think that there’s not really going to be a proper editing process—it’s not like someone’s going to recommend a B plot, you know? And since I’m not planning to do a paper copy, there won’t be the laying-out process. I guess after I’m done going through it, i’ll just contact the copy editor and see if he’ll take a look at it.

Progress report

Went over the rest of what is now Part 1 and started Part 2. I’ve printed out the Introduction and Part 1 and am going to look them over.

I also found a couple of new sources today, which makes me happy. It’s hard because, while one can check things out of the local library—not quite the normal way, but it’s possible—the local system here doesn’t have a lot that’s helpful, and I’m not too thrilled with the idea of traveling around to some of the larger libraries. It’s definitely one of those perfectionist things—I think I can crank out a perfectly good book without reading that biography of that one guy that went out of print decades ago—so I’m trying to focus on the fact that 90% is good enough here….

Progress report

I wrote the introductory material today and started in on the first chapter, cleaning up the letters and adding explanations where needed. Right now my thinking is to have each chapter be a different hospital, since my grandfather did move around. The downside is that some chapters are going to be really long and some really short. Maybe instead of making it Chapter 1, Chapter 2 I’ll make it Introduction and then Part 1, Part 2—that maybe gives people a better idea of what to expect.