Yakimali’s Gift
I finished final edits for Yakimali’s Gift and found out the release date is July 1—in less than one month. Gulp. I’m getting very excited and a tad nervous.
The publisher, Astraea Press, sent a copy of the first-pass galley, and now it seems more real. Besides the story, the galley includes my dedication, acknowledgements, and author notes. All that’s missing is the cover, which I haven’t seen yet. That will be in the final galley.
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In case you don’t know, a galley is the document (usually in Microsoft Word) that the eBook creator and typesetter use to format the manuscript for publication. At this stage, you want it to be right. Changes can be made, but at a (sometimes high) cost to the publisher. So both the publisher and the author have to go over the galley with the sharpest of eyes one last time.
The Castle Blues Quake
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I just finished the first round of edits for The Castle Blues Quake. The editor, Emily Lawrence, did a fantastic job of correcting errors that I would never have found (and obviously didn’t!) on my own. And I made her cry. Hey, in this business that’s a good thing. Here’s what she had to say:
“Hi Linda...just finished your book...I just wanted to stop by and tell you I loved it very emotional..the ending had me in tears...it was pretty clean, probably the cleanest I've done so far...nothing much for me to do...you did an awesome job.”
I have to say, that sure made my day.
One thing I still have to work on is writing some poems. I had originally used excerpts from songs and poems I’d dug up that fit perfectly in the story. I tried to get permission to reprint them, but didn’t have any luck contacting the parties. I’ve written other poems for the story, so I’m not too worried about tackling these new ones.
My editing experience so far with both Beau Coup Publishing and Astraea Press have been very positive. I feel lucky to have such great editors.
What’s Next
I’ve been working some on marketing, but I really have to dig into it now that most of my editing is done. I’ll be blogging about that in the weeks to come.
Do you have any book promotion tips?
