At long last a LiveJournal by Jeri Smith-Ready

One day only!  A chance to win a signed copy of Wicked Game.  I'm guest-blogging at Paranormality, discussing the supernatural things I'm skeered of and how I overcome these crazy fears through writing.

(And no, I'll never write about monkeys or clowns.  I only dispel irrational fears through writing.)

Also in this guest blog post, I discuss for the first my new young adult work-in-progress.  This should not be taken as a guarantee that it will ever see the light of day.  After you read about it, immediately wipe your memory, or we'll all have jinxed its chances for publication.

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Now playing: The Prophecy - Howard Shore
via FoxyTunes   

I just finished the line edits for the final volume of the Aspect of Crow trilogy, The Reawakened.  It was surprisingly painless. 

I feel like I should be sad, since it's the last time I'll do creative work on one of these books, but I'm thrilled with how it all ended.  It's HUGE.  Lots of surprises.  There are always stories left to be told (TR easily could have been a duology), but this is it for now.  I started writing Eyes of Crow about this time of year in 2004.  The trilogy was bought on proposal in February 2005, and Eyes came out in November 2006.  I started working on TR nearly eighteen months ago, and it's by far my longest and most challenging book.  I hope the series readers will be happy and not kill me too much on behalf of those characters who get whacked.  ;-)

So I'm taking the rest of the day off, to read an ARC I've been dying to read for months, I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone by Stephanie Kuehnert (writerstephanie), then tomorrow it's back to the second draft of Bad to the Bone (for the first half of the day, then I'm off to Balticon until 1am).

Going to get a cup of coffee first.

ETA: Heh, I just read the post I wrote when I finished the rewrite for this book.  I sounded just as shellshocked back then.

And you are...?

That's probably what you're thinking, since I haven't blogged (first I typed "blooged," which shows you how out of practice I am) in ten days. This morning I turned in the rewrite for The Reawakened (yes, you will cry buckets, but not until November) and found out I'll be getting the line edits back in ten days, before I've had time to forget what it's all about.

Line edits, basically, are when the editor gets a little more nitpicky than the first go-around (where he or she discusses major issues, such as character and plot and I dunno, maybe the fact that the manuscript is twenty-five thousand words too long, just as a fr'instance). The author makes changes as quickly as possible and sends back the manuscript so it can go to the copyeditor.

For both of my publishers, the line edits are done on paper, which means I write each change on the manuscript, and then the editor (or her lovely assistant) types in my changes. Some publishers are moving toward electronic edits, which I imagine involve Microsoft Word's comment and track changes functions (anyone with electronic edits, feel free to enlighten).

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So, the latest updates:

( Click here for things more fun than edits )



I think that's it for now. As you can tell, I'm a bit fried. Tomorrow I'm thrilled to be doing an interview with Fast Forward TV. Wish me luck, and a complete lack of stuttering stupidity!