Publication Process: Copy Edits

I have reached a ‘never-before’ stage on my books. The Golden City has come back from copy editing.

What does that mean? Well, my editor’s job was to look for things that needed to be changed at the macro level. You know….this plot point doesn’t make sense, why did character X do that?, and character Y is changing names.

But the copy editor is looking at a micro level. (Now, please note that the editor above does some micro level stuff, too, and every short fiction editor I’ve worked with does that was well, but the novel process seems to be more complicated.) My copy editor is checking punctuation, capitalization, word choice, etc…

On Friday I got the following:
A manuscript with all the changes done via Track Changes.
A Style Sheet.

Now the Style Sheet appears to have the following elements:
1) What style manuals they prefer.
2) A list of my idiosyncratic word and punctuation choices. (For example, they noted that I use ‘dryly’ rather than ‘drily’ and that I’m fond of serial commas.)
3) A list of Names, Places and Other Stuff That’s Important.

I’m supposed to, at this point, make any corrections to the Style Sheet that are needed, and go through all the corrections in the novel and note whether I want to reject/change them. If I don’t, I just leave them alone.

It’s interesting to do this because my copy-editor was reading this at a sentence level. That engenders certain mistakes. For example, in my altenate history, Portugal has split into two countries. They didn’t catch that, so every time I mention the country ‘Northern Portugal’ (like Northern Ireland), they correct that to northern Portugal.

In Portugal, it’s not unusual for family members not to use the same surname. Where I’ve done that, I see that they ‘corrected’ my error on the style sheet so that the family members all have the same name. Ouch!

And there are some interesting word choices. For example, where I have I only need a few, they changed it to I need only a few. While this is gramatically correct, it’s not natural in dialog. (I’ve actually run across 3 of the moving onlys so far.)

But this is a copy editor’s job. They’re looking for tiny things that break the rules. They’re working on consistency. They’re not there to consider the big picture.

So it will be an interesting step for me, learning how my copy editor wants things done. I can already tell that there are some things I will change in my next manuscript, in hopes of saving that poor person some headaches…

Care and Feeding of the Debut Author #6

173 days to go!

But it’s crunch time, so that doesn’t really matter.

Well, it’s not exactly crunch time, but it feels like it. At the top of my MSS for Book 3, I have a series of dates, each coupled with a goal wordcount:
-Friday 5/10, 30K
-Friday 5/17, 40K, etc…

The idea here is to pound out an initial draft of Book 3 with ample time to do a couple of revision passes. The book isn’t due until January 1, but I want the first draft done by the end of summer.

Well, after stressing for a week about my presentation at the DFW Writer’s Conference and traveling for several days (I have a bad track record of null wordcount while traveling), I reached 5/10 seriously behind my schedule. So now I’m pushing and pushing trying to catch up.

Let’s just say that I won’t hit the original goal on the 17th, and possibly not by the 24th, either (depending on how the whole tiling process goes down).

Now I’ve hit all my turn-in dates so far, and I don’t plan to miss this one. But I’m learning whether or not I can crank out a 115K book (from scratch) in 9 months. That’s what my agent and I set as our goal.

This is a weird thing for me. As a debut author, I’ve never had to do this with a deadline before. I’ve always taken novels pretty casually precisely because I wasn’t under contract. It’s a rather intimidating place to be when you’ve never done it before.

Will I make it? Will I be able to do this consistently? I guess we’ll find out…

Gratuitous Dog Pic/ The Words

Gratuitous Dog Picture:

This is Al taking a break during a Frisbee match.
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I’ve been struggling with writing the ‘sailing’ parts of Book 3, mostly because:
1)I haven’t decided what type of yacht I have them sailing yet, and
2)Sailing has a lot of specific terminology, much of which I’ve forgotten since my sailing lessons of a few years ago.

In addition, I’m trying to think of terminology as how it would occur in Portuguese. OK, that’s a convoluted thought, but let me give you a couple of examples.

In English, a ship’s toilet is usually referred to as a head. This word isn’t used in Portuguese (although it does apply in terms of a sail…another usage of the word in English). That said, Marina can’t be confused over the toilet being referred to as the head because as far as I can tell, it’s referred to as a water closet in Portuguese.

In English, ships are often referred to as female. Not so in Portuguese, where ships are things, not generally anthropomorphized. I had to take this out of another story when I caught my main character referring to his ship as ‘she’…oops!

On top of this, there’s the whole set of sailing terms that I have to get right for English readers. Easy example: When you carry a rope onto a ship, it suddenly becomes a line. If you don’t call it a line, sailors will mock you. They know.

So I’m constantly debating terminology as I’m writing. Would a Portuguese person think/say that?

I know I’m going to get things wrong. I’m trying, but there are so many places for me to screw up…

(I’ve talked before about choosing to alter Portuguese naming conventions and I’m using Americanisms such as referring to the floor above the ground floor as the ‘second floor’, so I know I’m already far off base….)

Historical Fudgery: Costume Research Edition

When I talked about Historical Resources last week, one of the things I spoke of was resources for costume detail. So here are some of my suggestions and links:

Costume Books:

I actually own more than the ones shown here. But I wanted to show a few. The one on “Russian Elegance” and “Calico Chronicle” are the ones I paid Full Price (gasps!) for, because they were both newer and directly tied to something I was researching. I admit that I bought the rest used. I’m very partial to the work of John Peacock, by the way…

However, costume books tend to focus on the clothing of the wealthy–so keep that in mind while researching.

Catalogs:

These are only useful if you’re researching some date after 1880 or so, but they are excellent for showing what the average guy or gal would wear. Off the Rack. Mail Order. Very useful. They also include the items your characters will have scattered about the house…

My favorite is the big 1902 Sears catalog, but to one side you also see the 1895 Harrod’s catalog. I’ve also been picking up a lot of 1930s resources, preparatory to researching that 1933 Saratoga Springs novel (with Patrick O’Donnell as an adult) that I’m hoping to write one day.

Websites:
Now a LOT of websites out there chronicling certain periods, Victorian and Edwardian being very popular. There are also websites that sell historic costumes. So some of the ones I’ve used are:

1900s Dress
Gentleman’s Emporium
SCA Russian Dress
Clothing in Early Rus
Premier Design Historic Clothing
Victorian Web: What Victorians Wore
Victoriana Magazine
which also has a…
Regency Page
Regency Fashion
The Regency Fashion Page
A Regency Repository

And you could add yours…
I’m going to start a links list over on my website (not necessarily this week) so if you have other suggestions of prime websites for costume, feel free to put a link in the comments below (or over on my LiveJournal)

Care and Feeding of the Debut Author #5

180 days to go!

One of the questions that I was asked at the DFW Writer’s Conference concerned my cover. I had cards to hand out with my cover on them, which is where people saw it.

The question?

What did you have to do to get that cover?

This was followed up with ‘Did you have to pay extra?’ and similar questions, questions which revealed that the questioners had either 1)No idea how this works in traditional publishing, or 2)Done work with self-publishing or author mills (I’m not saying those two are the same, only that in both you can pay for a better cover.)

So here’s the answer:

I did nothing to get this fantastic cover. As near as I can tell, my editor pulled passages of description from my manuscript, handed those to the art department, and they chose a background and picked a model*. When there was a snafu with the dress, my editor stepped in and chose a different gown. Photo shoot took place. Background was put in (including that neat little ‘city’ on the right which has a strong resemblance to the Ribeira in Porto.)

And voila!

I have a beautiful cover. I paid no one. I am lucky, lucky, lucky, that my editor and the art department did such a great job.

Please note, I had no say in this whole process. My only control over the cover was the actual manuscript itself. Having talked to a lot of other authors published by the Big 6, we generally don’t have much control (not unless the cover is horribly horribly off). I would think that the smaller the publisher, the more control the author has.

But as long as my publisher turns out awesome covers like this, I’m content to let them do their thing!

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*I talk about the amazing choice for the model back on April 1.

Free Kindle E-story

Amazon has made “The Eretik” free again, although I can’t say for how long. The last time they did so, it only lasted for a day.

This is a short story in my ‘dragon’ series, although there are no dragons. It is, however, a stand alone tale, so you won’t be roped into buying all the others: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006WOOUPO

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Also, I’m taking a break this week from my normal blogging schedule to prep for the DFW Writer’s Conference, where I’m doing a presentation on Historical Research. I’ll be back on schedule next Wednesday ;o)

Care and Feeding of the Debut Author #4

One of my RWA groups had some links passing around early this week, to a few articles that discussed trends in social media. The gist of those? Facebook is falling off in popularity with young people.

Now it’s important to point out that FB is still the big hitter out there in the social media world, but it seems to be losing the interest of many young folks, mostly because their elders are on there as well. They don’t want their grandmother in on their conversations with their college friends.

How does that affect me, as an author with a debut right around the corner (for high values of ‘right around the corner’)? I’m not sure. Apparently, two of the up-and-coming media platforms are Pinterest and Tumblr. Both are more about pictures than text.

While I do have a Pinterest account, I rarely use it. I’m at a loss for understanding how an author could use that platform to good effect. If you can point me to some good examples, I would appreciate it.

I don’t have a Tumblr account. Again, I don’t know exactly how an author would use one to their advantage. What would you guys suggest?

I do have a Twitter (@jkcheney), but I’m not on there enough to be a ‘good’ user. I’m trying to stay more current there, but there are days when I just don’t get around to Tweeting.

So perhaps I’ll have the media world figured out by the time the ‘big day’ comes. Perhaps.

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(Links courtesy of Marsha West)