The House of Plagues
Well, the past few weeks have been... days.
Absolutely.
Me word real good.
I don’t have as much for you this month. For a few reasons.
The big one is we sort of became a plague house over the past three weeks. My partner and I are still masking when we go out into the world, but I still somehow managed to catch a nasty cold at the end of April (just in time for my mom’s visit to California). Everything got raw enough that I ended up losing my voice for a couple days and then passed it to my beloved. Which really sucks because I’ve always had a pretty robust immune system, since I was a little kid, and she.. doesn’t. So I got over it in about a week and it took her, well, until about now. She’s still fighting off the last of it as I write this.
And of course this overlapped nicely (if we can call it that) with one of my cats needing surgery. My dear, beautiful Goblin has been suffering from glaucoma for almost a year. We’ve been managing it with eye drops for most of that time, but it would still swell occasional, and it finally became undeniable that he’d lost all sight in that eye. So we made the decision to have the eye removed. It was extremely nerve-wracking for me because I have a pile of eye-issues related to a childhood trauma of my own. And it didn’t help that it was a whole process of appointments before the actual surgery.
Goblin came though it fine, don’t worry. I probably stressed about it way more than he did. He didn’t like wearing a cone for two weeks, but it’s off now and he’s happier than he’s been in a while. Plus he was dealing with diminished vision for so long that losing the eye hasn’t slowed him down at all. Really it’s just me feeling guilty I took so long to do it because of my own fears.
Fear stops us from doing a lot of things. And I’m not just excusing myself when I say... that’s understandable. It all comes down to facing our fear and doing the right thing. Taking that next step, even when it makes us really uncomfortable. Like they say, courage is when you’re afraid but you do the right thing anyway.
So it’s okay to be scared. Just don’t let it stop you from being brave.
I mean, Goblin’s got one eye now and no depth perception, but he threw himself up on top of the wardrobe this morning.
In other news...
God’s Junk Drawer is done with copyedits. Levi, the copyeditor, went through the whole manuscript with notes, grammatical corrections, some questions, and a few suggestions. And then I spent about a week and a half going over all of his notes (while also juggling a sick beloved and a depressed cat forced to wear a post-surgery cone).
Quick explainer, which I probably should’ve done a while ago. Some of you probably know this, but there’s a few different types of editing. The editing I do in early drafts, and then do again later with an editor, is usually called developmental editing. It’s when we’re actually trying to shape and form the manuscript. Tightening some parts, adding others, changing some altogether. Some books don’t need much of this. Some need a lot. It all depends on the writer’s individual style and how polished a book they tend to turn in. I’ve turned in some manuscripts that I felt were really solid, but also one or two that were, for various reasons, not solid at all. Bordering on liquid. One may have assumed a gaseous form. I think one editor would completely agree with that.
Copyediting, on the other hand, is the nuts and bolts phase. It’s when someone-- a copyeditor-- goes through and makes sure all the spelling and grammar’s correct. That all the dates and names and other random facts line up. It’s a meticulous, line-by-line job.
It’s also a tricky one because, on the writer side of it, a lot of us play with grammar and sentence structure and sometimes even spelling to make the story do the things we want it to do. If you’ve read any of my books (like, say, The Broken Room) you know that I like a certain pace to action. I want it to read fast, like you’re seeing it happen. Or trying to see it happen, but sometimes it’s so quick we just see the blur and put it together after the fact. It’s not unusual for me to deliberately create a run-on sentence to help sell the quick, breathless speed things are happening at. And this often means breaking a bunch of “correct” rules. A good copyeditor will see this and the reasoning behind it. I’ve shown them I know the rules and I also know how and why I’m breaking them, and what that breakage is going to accomplish.
Point is, I had a good copyeditor on God’s Junk Drawer. Levi saw what I was trying to do in a lot of places, but also caught a few spots where maaaaaaybe it should be this? Or that?
The next stop... layout! And then ARCs!
We also have a cover now and it’s... it’s pretty damned cool. I can’t show it to you yet, but I’m pushing to make sure all of you subscribed to the newsletter are the first folks to see it.
Oh, I also finished that comic script and the editor said... it was actually pretty solid for a first try. He suggested one tweak and, yeah, it was a good suggestion and makes a few things work better.. As I’ve said, it’s a new format for me so I’m still stumbling through it, but we’re moving forward.
Okay, I guess I had a fair amount for you after all.
What else do I have...
Cool Stuff I’ve Been Watching
I’ve got to be honest.... not a lot. Well, not a lot I didn’t talk about in the last newsletter. Doctor Who is still fantastic. The Grimm rewatch continues (we’re almost done with season three) and I have many, many thoughts about it. We’ve also been watching the last few episodes of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur and godDAMN that show should’ve run for four or five seasons. And of course, as I write this tomorrow’s the premiere of Murderbot. And some point soon I’m probably going to binge all of Andor in two or three nights.
Cool Stuff I’ve Been Reading
With all the sickness and cat stuff... not much, I’m ashamed to say. I read an early draft of a friend’s clever and very timely book. Currently reading Overgrowth by Mira Grant and I’ll be talking with her about it next week at Mysterious Galaxy (if you happen to be in the area). Next up for me... Well, I just got another blurb book, but I may dive into this Godzilla novelization/ translation. And then Staircase in the Woods is just sitting there...
Cool New Toys
I’m in that part of the year where I try not to get much for myself because my birthday is coming up. But a bunch of preorder stuff showed up, and I took advantage of a few sales. The biggest one is that I finally got my Marvel Legends Rom, an action figure I’ve essentially wanted since I was nine. I haven’t even taken him out of the package yet, and I have some plans for once he’s out (expect many photos). I also ended up building my own custom Four Horseman demon. He doesn’t have a name yet, but he looks really cool.
And I think that’s all I’ve got for you right now. As always, thanks for reading. See you again in thirty days or so.
