“The pursuit of perfection is a cover for massive insecurities.”

I jotted this down in my journal this morning after loading my latest round of corrections into both the print and ebook editions of The Last Good Man. There were three corrections.

One was a spelling issue: “Acknowledgement” vs “Acknowledgment.” Both are acceptable, though supposedly the second is more commonly used in America. I’d used both versions, which is not acceptable, so I settled on the more-popular-in-America spelling.

Throughout the manuscript I’ve set text messages and emails in an alternate font. The second correction was to remove the use of that alternate font in one instance where it didn’t belong.

In the third correction I’d mistakenly typed “NGC” when I meant “NGO” (nongovernmental organization) so I fixed that. This one bugs me, though, because I failed to catch the mistake in all my read-throughs, none of my beta readers noticed, and neither did my line editor or copyeditor. Oops! Ron gets credit for discovering it.

“What’s an NGC?” he asked while reading through what I thought would be the final print version.

NGC?

In my mind I scrambled for an answer. NGC, NGC…that’s from astronomy. New General Catalog. Wait. THAT CAN’T BE RIGHT!

I took a look at the passage and finally worked it out. Oh.

I know I get way too worked up over these tiny issues. Refer back to the first line of this post.

On a more positive note, I’ve gotten some really kind blurbs in support of The Last Good Man, so all is not lost, even if the odd spelling error still awaits discovery.

I’m very grateful to Greg Bear for recently taking the time to read the book. He says: “The Last Good Man pulls us into next month’s headlines with a conviction and energy that makes for an extraordinary tale.”

Steven Gould and Vonda N. McIntyre have also provided advance praise which you can read here. I’m especially grateful for this support, given that I’m putting this novel out on my own.

Preorders Coming Soon
I’m hoping to be able to set up preorders in the next couple of weeks, but bear with me — I’ve never done preorders before and I’m sure there will be snags. The publication date remains June 20.

Posted on: Monday, April 24th, 2017 at 11:52 am
Categories: Writing Life.
Tags: The Last Good Man