I'm sorry it took so long, but as I said previously this was a book that just seemed to grow and grow, and what I thought initially would be a normal enough length for a fantasy novel, ended up at two hundred and fifty thousand words. Far larger than I expected. But then as I have said elsewhere, my writing style is that of a panster (writing by the seat of my pants!) not a plotster. The best I can hope for as I write is that I have a rough idea of where the book is going. (And sometimes I'm wrong even in that!)
Anyway I finished the first draft a few weeks ago, got my sister to do an edit on it (she's an English lit sort of a girl with a far better eye for detail than me - but don't tell her I told you so!), and then spent three frustrating days with the track changes feature of Word. - That has to be the most horrible edit feature of any program I've ever used. Your eyes go screwy as you spend ages struggling over every little letter and space in the text.
Then, after a couple more days doing the format edit and checklists etc, at midnight last night I knew I was ready, and went to publish it on the kindle. Of course even that wasn't straight forward, and after three attempts lasting until dawn this morning, while the little wheel spun around and around telling me it was uploading the text, (the wheel lies!), I went to Kindle Boards. And there some wonderful man suggested a complete restart of the computer and wiping the cache, and behold - the fourth time it worked!
So that's been my night - and my day. Currently I'm overwhelmingly happy, but exhausted, and even after a nap I don't think I can write anything more today.
My plans at this stage, (yes I know, my plans usually come to naught), are to finish off the second book in the Wizard At Law series before Christmas. It's only forty thousand words and almost complete, so even for me it should be possible.
So that's it for me for the day. Next time I'll return to the Alien Spotter's Handbook.
Cheers, Greg.
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