Finished reviewing the proof on Saturday night. And let me tell you, if there was any chance of my falling prey to hubris, reviewing that proof killed it.
When I need to do a really hard edit, really see the flaws, I edit backwards. Someone taught me the trick a long time ago and I find it invaluable. I start with the last page, read it and look for typos, extra words, missing words, repeated words, or any other artifacts of revision that may have slipped by. It’s one of those tricks of the mind. When you read it in the right direction, it’s too easy to get caught up in the flow of the story, how it’s unfolding. When you remove yourself from the plot, you see only the construction of the sentences, the actual physical way the words fit together and you see that page in isolation. It makes it so much easier to spot the errors.
And there were a fair number. Well, I left around 72 notes in the pdf, which isn’t really that many in a book that’s almost 300 pages. But some of them would have been really embarrassing if they had slipped through. There were some formatting errors too. But, knock wood, the worst have been fixed.
I worked through most of Friday evening and a good chunk of Saturday and sent it back to my publisher.
The uncorrected version was sent off to Publisher’s Weekly for review, but it’s industry standard for the press to get uncorrected proofs, so I’m not worried about that. The reviewer will get a good enough picture of the story to complete the review (here’s hoping he or she likes it. Cross those fingers, damn it!)
Then, last night, I received another email from my publisher that the first mention of it had shown up on Publisher’s Weekly”
“Chasing Cold by Stephen Graham King (Mar., trade paper, $16, ISBN
978-0-9839531-7-3 “King’s far-future debut explores a man’s reasons for leaving his home and what he finds when he ventures into the unknown.”
And last, but definitely not least, the venue confirmed for the launch party. If you’re in T.O and I haven’t reached you through Facebook, hit me with an email and I’ll get you the details.