When it became apparent that Fire wasn’t going to make it out in time for Thanksgiving, I set my sights on December 17th as a nod to the Wright Brothers and their first flight. Yesterday, I got my first copy and decided not to wait. After all, I would just be depriving you of six additional shopping days.
This time around, the process of turning the manuscript into a book was tougher on me, but I ended up with a better product. Things I did differently:
- I used Reedsy to find a developmental editor. Alexandra Ott came to the rescue. She’s also an author for Simon & Schuster with several titles to her name. She gave me detailed feedback and asked me the questions that guided my decisions for the final version of the book.
- Upwork provided copy editor Claire Rushbrook and book designer/formatter Gareth Clegg. Both were fabulous and helped clean up the semi colons, repeated words, and misspellings I had left behind.
- Finally, 99designs pointed me back to The Busy Dee for the cover.
- Lastly, I asked three people to do final proofreading. They found things even Claire missed. Woo Hoo! Thank you Kelly, Beth, and Ardith.
- With the loss of one critique group (closely tied to my previous publisher), I was happy to get invited into another. Weekly and monthly feedback was invaluable.
Cindy Olsen and Gary Hecker both read early drafts and helped to point out some plot holes and pacing issues.
Meanwhile, the day job and consulting gig (working with a company to get a hydrogen/electric powered aircraft flying) is sucking up a lot of my time. Thus far, I have only written a single page of the last book in the series, Ash. I want to take a break over the holidays and start getting that plotted out.
What can you do to help? Buy the books! Fire is here. Spark is here.
Wohoo!!!!