What editing a book looks like…

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So last night I grabbed my review copy of WALKING THROUGH DARKNESS and finally decided to go through it and mark up any final changes I wanted to make. And there are lots, around 20 in total. Mainly, formatting issues and the odd word-exchange here and there, and two or three dreaded typos (those little bastards make my skin crawl!). But luckily I found nothing that won’t take half-a-second to fix.

But here’s a word of advice: If your print company tells you to embed your fonts into your PDF, then embed your fonts into your PDF. Else you get all kinds of funky going on in there!

Here’s a few pictures of the fabulously quick editing process:

Ready to go: I've got my copy, my page markers and my pen!

One of the contents pages. Thankfully with no errors.

A double-page layout from the inside. Thanfully also with no errors.

The finished copy. All marked up and ready to go for one final edit before publication!

The lady in red

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Today it’s been 10 full years since my mother died. A decade. The years have gone by and I, who was just 15 when she passed, have grown up. I’ve come to realise things that have changed my perception of my mother and her passing. But nothing has changed how much I miss her.

It is on this day every year that I take my time to be morose. I don’t grieve the dead. I don’t believe the people who loved you in life would want to postpone the lives of their beloved with sadness and mourning. I know my mother wouldn’t want this for me. I know she’d want to see me flourish. So I do that for her — I flourish. Every day of the year I strive to make her proud, if that’s possible. But not on this day. This day I take as my own, and this is the day when I remember her. It’s the day I allow myself a tear or two. I allow myself to feel bitter and angry, to mope and mourn.

Like I said, I was 15 when my mother passed. Right now, I am 25. I have come a long way from the lost and anxious child that she would remember me as. There are so many things I wish I could tell her or show her. 10 years is a long, long time. But here are few things I wish I could communicate to her (and perhaps, in my heart, I can):

  • I’d love to show her the proof copy of my very first ever book. I think that would make her proud. I think she’d love to know that at least one of her children has made it on their own, that one of us has broken free from the noose of 9-5 jobs.
  • I’d love to tell her I’m a metal head and covered in tattoos. After all, this is who I am, and I don’t think she’d be surprised by this knowledge ;) .
  • I’d love for her to meet my husband. I think she’d love him, and I think she’d be so proud to know I’m married to a guy who made it middle-management by the age of 21. I’d love for her to see our wedding photos, and to know that even though we’re living on the edge of piss-poor, we are happy together.
  • I’d like her to know I made it out of the Podunk town where I grew up. I think she’d love our little pad just outside the city.
  • But most of all I’d like her to know I still love her and still miss her.

Here’s some photos.

As a girl of 12 in 1967

At my parents' wedding reception in 1971, with her mother to her left and mother-in-law to the right of my father

As a hippy in 1971 :)

In 1975, with my eldest sister and heavily pregnant with her second child.

With me in 1986 :D

And again :D

Here I am with her on my 2nd birthday in 1988.

And this post would not be complete without the following video. She was the lady in red. It was her favourite colour, and she always wore that red jumper I bought her with pride.

Boredom Buster!

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It seems since the turn of the new year I’ve become boring. Last year I was able to pluck content out of the air, but not doing much thus far this year means no photo posts to speak of. And while I’m writing really hard there’s not much I can say apart from everything is in progress. Without spamming my own blog with nitty-bitty updates, I can’t say much more than life is rolling along in one of those limbo moments, where lots of little things are happening in the background, but aren’t really significant in their own right. Of course, these little things are important, but they hardly make the world go around. Or interesting blog posts.

So I’ve come up with the Boredom Buster! When crap gets slow or life whisks me up in a whirlwind or writing and uni, too much for me to be out and about snagging photos, I’ll posts some awesome little treasures I find around the internet, just to appease you until I have some wonderously amazingly fabtastic to share. You know, stop you getting bored.

So here they are. A few little gems of internet goodness. Enjoy!

What happens when you cross the threshold of being young enough to party:

“My first hardcore song” by Juliet is awesome!

Review of Entangled by Cat Clarke

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EntangledEntangled by Cat Clarke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My thoughts about this book swerved around a little as I read it. I started off glued to the page (which was pretty much how I stayed until I finished it!) and I clicked with Grace immediately. She is my sort of character – and the book is character driven, despite there being plenty of hook and plot! – but, BUT, she’s one of those characters you find yourself both loving and hating at various points throughout the book. Perhaps ‘hate’ is a little strong here, neverless it described how I felt about grace as the book went on.

At times she comes off as a vaulnerable teen who needs one hell of a hug; she’s surrounded by a multitude of problems and she does have this underlying, heartbreaking despair that makes you feel for her and for all that’s been her lot. And then she careens into this sort of bossy, snarky, bitchy, in-your-face hormonal almost-emo that want to shake up a bit and you want to tell her to grow up. Yet I can’t help but feel that this is Grace, this is who she is, and Cat Clarke has captured the very spirit of being a teenager and rammed it so completely perfectly into Grace, that by the end of the book you can’t help but want to take a step back and celebrate this fantastic story.

Entangled really is gripping. From the moment you open the pages and find Grace in this kidnap situation, through following how she got there, along with the stories of the other people in her life, to the resolution – no spoilers, but the ending is amazing! – you feel like you’ve been on the journey of this girl’s life right alongside her.

Clarke’s writing is fresh – it captures the very essence of today’s youth in the inner city British/Scotish culture and it takes you right to the street.

There are so many reasons why I think this book is important in today’s YA market, despite the fact I’m only giving Entangled 4 stars, and this is because Grace did grate on me just a little bit and she was laid on just a tad too thickly in some places. But if you haven’t already, you must pick up this book. You will not be disappointed, it’s one hell of a ride!


View all my reviews

Sweet sweet progress :D

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I mentioned in this post I started the year having to scrap a good amount of my WIP to re-write it according to updated research and characterisation. I’m glad to say I’ve finally overtaken the word count I started the year out with. I began with 10,000 words, scrapped ALL but 75 of them (75!) and began writing A PROMISE OF DEATH again. I’m pleased to say I now have a grand total of 11,218 words back in the project, and I closed Chapter Two today.

To the right of the home page, you’ll see all my progress related things and stuff. I’m using a word count bar for projects I’m writing new words into, so please keep checking that stuff out if I forget tokeep regular updates flowing in :D

Book Updates

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I realised this morning I haven’t been updating this blog nearly enough lately, and that’s because I’m really busy actually writing, editing and designing my books, and I haven’t been out and about with my camera much this year yet. I haven’t been up to much aside from writing this year yet. So what am I up to?

Walking Through Darkness: I am yet to go through the proof copy of this book properly yet, but I will be at the weekend. Making a PDF with my Word Processor has caused a lot of formatting issues in the print copy, so I’m going to have to go through it with Adobe Acrobat and fully embed my fonts. I’m not looking forward to this, but alas it needs to be done!

Through A Lens, Brightly: Is getting there. I have not yet written any of the accompanying texts for the photographs, and a lot of the photographs are still in editing stage. I hope to be able to reveal some here very soon! I’m very happy with my set of photos, and I hope other people will enjoy my work too.

A Promise of Death: Is back up to the 10,000 word mark, although I seem to have lost some of Monday’s writing. About 700 words. I think I must have clicked “Don’t Save” instead of “Save”. Yes, you may point and laugh. Those 700 words were crappy, so I don’t really mind.

Village of Vampires: Still has not moved from the corner of my desk since I printed it out. Yep, I really hate extensive edits.

What writing stuff are you up to?

I haz a book babeh

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So my proof copy of WALKING THROUGH DARKNESS arrived on Friday. Now please accept my apologies for keeping it from you these past two days, but Friday I was too smitten with my new book babeh to show it anyone, and yesterday I banged my knee really hard, and I wasn’t in the mood for making blog posts.

But it’s here! It’s here! And it’s a real book! It’s a book with a couple of formatting errors that I’m yet to check through for typos. I can’t bring myself to do that yet. I’m still in the denial stage: I refuse to look at my babeh and pick faults with it.

I am over the moon to finally hold my book in my hands, but I need to let the excitement wear off first before I really read through it, otherwise I might skip over something detrimental and I’d hate it to go final print with even one error inside. Or outside. Any errors at all.

I took a picture:

See it’s a real book now! And you, too, could one of these in just 9 weeks.

NINE WEEKS!

I think I’m going to puke with nerves…

 

Book News!

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Last night I finished converting my manuscript of poetry for my upcoming book, WALKING THROUGH DARKNESS, and along with the cover, I uploaded the files in order to obtain the proof copy of my book.

My book.

My first book.

I can’t wait!

Here’s a sneak peak of the finished cover-flat image:

Ain’t she pretty?

I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am about recieving the very first copy of my book — a book by me! — and reading it through as an actual reader, and not a writer for a change!

Exciting times!

Watch this space for sneak-peaks of poems and inner pages coming soon!

I am hollerin’ from the treetops

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Okay, well not quite literally. That would be weird and uncouth, and I really don’t like climbing trees. Perhaps we’ll let that one slide past as one of those cushy cosy metaphors us writers are supposed to use when discussing anything.

What I am referring to, in a very real sense, is my writer’s voice. I partook in my very first writing session — proper writing session — of the year yesterday, where I actually wrote new words into A PROMISE OF DEATH. I hadn’t written on this manuscript since December 16th, and on my first writing session last Tuesday, I realised the start of this MS was such a mess I should just scrap it and start again.

I thought at first what I had written was a false start to this book. After doing so much research and characterisation over the holidays I thought I should scrap what I had and bring it up to date with my current level of thinking.

Yet, I saw the real truth when I put fingers to keyboard yesterday (yes, I’m back to drafting on the screen and not longhand, but I’ll save that story for another time) and the words that came out just clicked. They were arranged in such a way I felt proud (but not overly proud, it is still a first draft) that I had created those sentences. The words read with a certain music, a certain vibe, that said Girl, you are ready to pub-lish!

Now, I might sound big headed here, but a solid voice is something I’ve been looking for quite some time, and something I thought I wouldn’t find yet. When I discovered it there on the page, yesterday, it was like a Mind Boner. I saw it and I thought, this is me.

It’s not like I’ve been practicing. Like I said, I hadn’t written on this project since 16th December, in fact, I hadn’t written anything at all apart from a revised draft of my Creative Writing assignment. I should have been rusty. It should have been physically painful to make those words flow. And to start with I found it so hard to get back into the plot, to remember what drove my character.

But then it all started to come back to me as I hit the keyboard. And that’s when I realised who I am on the page, what drives me.