I did something very unusual this weekend, which was send a book out to beta readers. Normally I…don’t do that. Broadly speaking I feel writing a book is largely a closed loop between myself and my editor: she’s the source of feedback that I need, and I generally find adding more people in to that cycle to be very stressful.

I am, in fact, finding ( Read more... )

I have nearly finished the AAs for WALKING DEAD. The rest of the afternoon will be spent reading the last few chapters and typing them in so they’re no longer a burden on my tiny little mind.

I’ve also, much more satisfactorily-which should tell you how fond I am of doing AAs-finished converting cemurphy.net back over to WordPress and hacking it ( Read more... )

So I got revision notes on THE PRETENDER’S CROWN from my agent, the estimable arcaedia/Jennifer Jackson a couple of days ago. The first screen (which was all I read at the time) wasn’t too terrible (I have gotten *really* gun-shy about revision letters since the one that obliged me to *completely* rewrite HOUSE OF CARDS), so today I held my breath and ( Read more... )

So I have no problem being in the same room with someone who is reading one of my books. You know, a properly bound book and all that. If they laugh I want to know what bit they're laughing at, but that's no big thing ( Read more... )

After an hour and a half of work, I'm on page 17 of 421 on the copy edits for HOUSE OF CARDS. Unfortunately, I've gotten the same copy editor I did last time, and she and I clearly have different writing styles. The unfortunate part is she's corrected a great deal of material which is simply not to her liking, rather than being actively wrong or ( Read more... )

I'm pretty sure the punishment for saying I was having fun writing is getting two sets of copy edits to do in two weeks. I knew about the TQB ones; I had three weeks' warning that they'd be coming in. I did not know about the HOUSE OF CARDS ones; I got email late Thursday night saying "We're sending you copy edits and can we have them back ( Read more... )

Arright. I've determined where I went wrong. I think mostly it's a case of going wrong in so far as I can probably use most of what I've done, just not for another fifty pages or so. I've figured out how to fix the major thing that was causing me mental strife and which in turn has caused the problem (and it's a stupidly easy fix), and while I ( Read more... )

Today I don't much feel like doing this job ( Read more... )

Book done. Book submitted. Bye-bye, book.

Hopefully bye-bye this headache, too.

miles to Minas Tirith: 196

I work with some of the coolest people in the world ( Read more... )