I’d originally saved an empty draft version of this post titled ‘Edits’, since this week’s post was bracketed by my Part 1 and Part 2 articles on Life sigls, so I thought that this Friday would be a good point to give you guys an update on the edits on book #4. The plan was that my editor was supposed to be getting them to me in early March, so I figured that by now (early April) I’d have had time to look through the edits and get a good idea of when they’d be done. After all, there was no way I’d still be waiting on them, right?
Well, turns out I was wrong: I’m still waiting. It’s getting a bit ridiculous at this point, since I sent the first draft in during November, five months ago, meaning we’re actually at the point where I’ve written entire books in less time than it’s taken my publishers to edit this one. It’s not even going to be a full edit, either, which is the part that annoys me – it’ll only be the first-round edits, after which I’ll have to decide how to handle them, do them, send them back, wait for my publishers to do the copy-edits, do all the copy-edits too, and send THOSE back . . . and all under a tighter-than-usual deadline. But there’s not much I can do about it, so all I can really do is wait.
On the positive side, Book #5 is coming along nicely. I’ve just passed the 40,000 word mark, and should be reaching the halfway point this month. I’m busy working on plans for the latter half of the series, as well – this is the part of the series where a lot of the decisions get made for how the final conflicts of the story will play out, which means relatively small choices that I make now will have very big consequences down the line. It’s a lot of work, but it’s exciting!
Maybe it’s an April Fool’s joke?
How many books are anticipated for this series?
My current guess is about 10.
Start charging interest on missed sales due to delays on their part? *wink*
Seariously, it is rediculous but I guess you can use the time on book 5.
This just seems so strange. I thought sales on the new series were going well. I’m certainly planning on continuing to buy each book as it comes out! Is the publisher putting this on a back burner?
Sales are fine, yes. And the book’s definitely coming out – the contract’s signed and the publication date is set for this November. They’re just being slow.
No choice but to wait it out.
How frustrating! So sorry. Hopefully you’ll get the edits soon.
I’m really sorry that you are having such a long wait for the Book#4 edits to come back. I can understand your frustration with the publisher and a nagging doubt that the suggested Edits may somehow impact on the story-line of Book #5!
I always imagined that there was a close relationship between publisher and author, with the story coming from the author and the publisher (maybe) advising on current popular demand & crosschecking for internal typos plus continuity. Is there no way you can nudge them into saying just what/why the delay is?
[Perhaps a stiff email/letter from Charles Ashford would do the trick?]