And another amazing Larry Rostant cover, this one for The Trials, book 2 of The Red Trilogy, to be published by Saga Press in August.

Here’s my first status report from the end of November.

When working with a traditional publisher, the basic stages of revision are:

1 – an editorial letter in which the editor requests changes in plot or character, or better explanations of motivation or background, etc.

2 – Once the final manuscript is accepted, it goes to the copyeditor, who goes through the manuscript in close detail, correcting spelling, hyphenations, punctuation, and noting inconsistencies. The manuscript then goes back to the author giving us a chance to un-do some of that careful work if we don’t agree with it, along with a chance to correct the inconsistencies. This is also a chance to make more minor revisions. Huzzah!

3 – The manuscript goes back to the publisher, the changes are added to the master file, and the manuscript is then “typeset” for ultimate printing. This is the stage when the pages look like book pages. A PDF file is generated and these “page proofs” are sent to the author, who gets to read the whole thing one more time — and make minor changes … which we do. But that’s it. This is the last chance to fix things up.

So where am I?

Book 1: I finished going over the page proofs a few days ago, and will be sending my changes back just after the New Year, when it’s back-to-business in the publishing world. And yes! I made some changes, despite that this book has already been published, reviewed, award-nominated, and re-revised. Writers are never satisfied. But the changes are minor and go mostly to clarifying and making this book consistent with the next one.

Book 2: Yesterday I finished my final read-through of the manuscript after addressing the editor’s requested changes and making a few of my own. The revised manuscript will go back to Saga Press on Monday, and if no more changes are requested, it will go to a copyeditor.

Book 3: The first draft is done and I already made a start on revisions, but now I’ve got only five weeks to turn in a reasonable draft. So it’s back-to-work on this one. (Must write faster…)

We took an overnight trip to Honolulu to share Thanksgiving with family there — and that is the last trip currently planned. I’ve really enjoyed our travels this year and I’ve been lucky to be able to go, but traveling while trying to meet writing deadlines is a little stressful. At this point, I’m eager to just settle down and focus on writing for a couple of months — which is convenient, because I have a lot of writing to do. The two big projects are Book 2 of The Red Trilogy, and Book 3 of The Red Trilogy.

* Status of Book 2: The Trials — I just received the editorial notes from Joe Monti at Saga Press. I haven’t even gone over Joe’s comments yet, but this has become the top priority.

* Status of Book 3: For the past few weeks I’ve been working on the second draft. There is much, much, much more to do. This is second priority, but still critical.

When all of this is done, I want to get back to writing shorter fiction for a while, but that won’t be until February at the earliest. I am definitely not going to meet my short fiction goal for the year. Oh well. We do what we can. :-/