Your First Published Novel: Part 18

Eight days. The book releases in eight days.

So no we're in our final push. Honestly, we're probably handling stuff we should have handled earlier, but you know how schedules are. I think one of the big hold-ups is the cover, and I think for that we're waiting on the designer.

Monday we received two covers to evaluate. My art chops aren't the best, and my writer's group has four artists in it (and the rest just have great taste.) So I bounced it off them. They all liked the same cover (which was the same one I liked) and they gave me back great notes, which I passed on to Curiosity Quills.

Through this, I'm working on the 3rd draft of Death by Cliché 2. The first five chapters took days to finish, so I'm a little behind where I'd like to be and I need to finish five chapters a day to turn in by the 30th. That's coming along, but it's a fair amount of work.

Then on Thursday, they sent me a "dirty ARC" for notes. This close to release, I asked for a deadline and they told me Monday, so I needed to do a quarter of the book a day. That's 8-16 hours at the rate I proofread.

Also, my article for Scalzi's Big Idea blog is due soon, so I had to turn it in to my Writer's Group. It was terrible, so I've had to do three drafts since then.

But most everything is behind me, now. I've turned in my notes on the Arc. I have the 3rd draft of the Big Idea in for notes. I have almost finished this blog, and I've done my pass on my five chapters for today. All I have left is to put in some critique notes and then I can tackle some ad stuff for my game company.

So things are coming along nicely. It's good to be busy in this last week before release.