It isn’t all fun and games.

I truly enjoy writing G&B Detective Agency books. It is fun to sit down every morning and let Max, Skip, Monica and the rest of the characters take me off on their adventures. To me, it seems like I’m not writing books, but rather chronicling their escapades. So it isn’t a lot of work. I’m just following along. Then when they are done, I get to re-write the story, and it is fun to read what they did and tweak it. How often do you say in life, if I could just do it over again? That’s the rewrite, doing it all over again and doing it a bit differently. And I think the characters all appreciate me letting them do that. But then the work starts, the part that isn’t as much fun.

Right now I, myself, am in limbo. I don’t really want to rewrite Where the Hell is Angie and get that on my mind at the same time I’m trying to get Lonelyfarmer.com ready to publish. It just doesn’t work to start mixing the two. This is when Denise gets into the process, and I’m sitting around waiting for her. That’s not to say I’m not doing anything: I’m working on marketing, but all the fun stuff, like telling the story and putting together the cover, are done. As far as writing, this blog is about as fun as it gets for a while.

But back to Denise and Lonelyfarmer.com. She has already edited the manuscript once, after I did the rewrite. Then I went in and either approved or rejected her edits. That’s not really fun. I want to set the record straight right now: I usually accept that she knows more about punctuation than I do. Most of the time I press the accept button. But sometimes I don’t. By this time the book is written, and It is pretty monotonous work to go through the whole book and see what all she found that was wrong with it. But I get that done, get the cover set up, upload it to the CreateSpace builder, and then I order the first proof, and after that the second proof, and after that a third proof and after that…

If you don’t know what a proof is, it is the book. It gets printed, cover and all. I sit down with the actual book in my hands and read it cover to cover one more time before it is published and sold. If there are any mistakes, I go back to the formatted manuscript, correct them, submit the manuscript and order another proof, just to make sure one more time. And when I get that proof, Denise gets to read it cover to cover to see if she can find any mistakes. Then I go back, correct anything she finds and resubmit it. Then I order another proof, read it cover to cover one more time. This goes on until Denise and I are convinced that nothing has gotten past us. Toward the end, we may make only three or four corrections in the whole book, but we keep at it. I will read it cover to cover five or six times before I’m done. I had hoped to get this one out by the end of the month, but it is beginning to look like that was wishful thinking. But I owe it to all the people who buy my books and read them to give them the best effort I can. That is where I stand right now, still reading proofs. Don’t get discouraged though, I’ll get there eventually, and I promise it will be worth the wait.