Dead Calm, the Dylan Scott novella I've been working on, landed on my editor's desk on Wednesday afternoon. Am I pleased about that? You bet! I had many moments when I thought it would never be written. Some books flow and some, um, don't. Dead Calm didn't. In fact, writing it reminded me of the famous Peanuts essay:
Dead Calm will be available in June and more details will follow soon.
Several people have asked me what happens next. Publishers vary but this is a Carina Press book and the route to publication will go something like this:
1/. I consume lots of alcohol to celebrate the fact that it's on my editor's desk (or Inbox as it's gone by email) and not mine. As I've already signed the contract on the strength of a synopsis and opening chapters - or just a synopsis in the case of this novella which is around 30k words rather than the usual 80-90k words - I know it should be fairly close to the book she's expecting.
2/. Developmental or content edits are the first job for my editor. She reads the story with an eye on content. Should a character's motivation be stronger? Does a certain scene have enough impact? Should I give the reader more/less information about a certain point? How come a character has aged three years in a fortnight? She emails the story back to me with her notes as comments on the file and often a written explanation of what she feels are the story's strengths and weaknesses.
3/. I read through her comments, make any changes necessary, and email the (hopefully) improved version back to her.
4/. Line edits are next. This is where my editor goes through the book line by line checking for grammatical errors, typos, clumsy sentences, etc. She also decides if my changes have worked.
5/. She emails the file back to me with her comments/corrections and I go through the story again. (This is all done using 'track changes' on our word processing software.)
6/. When we're both happy that it's as good as we can make it, the file is sent to a proofreader for a final read through. You would think that as I've read the book dozens of times and my editor has been through it several times, there couldn't possibly be any errors left to spot. Wrong. When my last book was sent to the proofreader, she pointed out that I had a character covering his hands with his ears. Um, tricky. It made us laugh but I'm so glad it didn't end up in the final version!
7/. During this process (and I've already done it for Dead Calm) I complete the Art Fact Sheet which involves telling the artist about any important visual aspects of the characters or setting, conveying the mood, etc., providing a couple of sentences that give the essence of the story, and dreaming up a short synopsis.
8/. My editor and I then see the back cover copy (blurb) and make sure it gives a good account of the book.
9/. Eventually, I see the draft cover and am asked for my views on that. They're usually something like "It's freakin' awesome!". When the final cover image arrives and I have permission to share, I bore everyone to death and show it off on Facebook, this website, Twitter and anywhere else I can think of.
10/. Then I get my book, it goes up on the Carina Press 'Coming Soon' page, it's available to pre-order on Amazon and Publication Day soon comes round.
I hope that's helped those curious about the process.
Have a great weekend, all!