Issue 75 - Your Official Spokesperson is not Real, and that's OK

Hello, welcome to 500 Words. This newsletter was written by a human.

For the past week, I've been deep into the final proofreading of my second novel, Resist. Once the proofreader has checked everything in your book, you have to proofread their work, which means reading your own book like it was written by someone else. It's an out-of-body experience, or maybe out of mind. I've thought about hiring a proofreader to check the proofreader, but then would I need to hire another proofreader to check the first two?

Pre-sales for the book start next month. It will be published on June 30. (Which is also my youngest son's birthday. He will be 12.)

Resist is book two in a three-part series of novels. The third book, Liberation, is lounging around now in a detailed but messy outline. The characters are doing exercises like players warming up before a tennis match. They wake me up too early in the morning with their chatter, and they sometimes make it hard to fall asleep. They're impatient for more of my attention. I tell them that I have to feel my way through this massive job, but do it in small bits. The goal is to write 600 words a day. If I do that for 208 days, I'll have a big mess of words that I can turn into a novel in a year or less.