Home Stretch: Pen and Prejudice

Yes, this is almost ready. I'm in the final stages of uploading it to amazon, both a printed and Kindle version. This has been an eye-opening experience, let me tell you. I've gone over this manuscript a thousand times and I'm STILL finding minor typos. This is what an editor does. In addition to content issues, on the most basic level she/he offers a fresh pair of eyes. At a certain point one's brain says, "Hey, I've seen this before. Let's conserve energy. I'll just slip in a mental snapshot of what I've seen before. I won't tax cells that I don't have to." And, lo and behold, typos are born.

Anyway, this book has been in the making for three years. I couldn't find an agent who would shop it. I thought about putting it up on amazon myself, but then personal issues overwhelmed to the point where it was, book, who cares about that stinking book? Fast forward eight months, I began a spate of dead-on serious editing that is Nobel prize-winning material and is so far above my ken that I essentially hunt for subjects and verbs and try to make them agree and assume a whole hell of a lot. When you edit that much and material that is that complex, you just don't have the energy to do anything at the end of the day but, well, knit. Even at that I can only manage hats. I have several. Anyone need a hat? Finally, I entered it in the amazon breakthrough contest. I got to round two, but sadly didn't make it to round three.

It was back to the drawing board or more correctly the formatting board.  Sigh. This book is REALLY problematic because of the formatting issues. It didn't seem anything of a challenge at all until I began to format it myself. My Dreamweaver skills have improved tenfold. My right wrist is killing me, I am surrounded by dust bunnies the size of small dogs. But it is done. The only thing left to do is navigate the createspace upload process. Wish me luck.

I think it's a fun book. It's most definitely a beach read. It says a lot about trying to scratch out a writing career when you have a job and kids. And in the end the girl gets the guy (who has more than a passing resemblance to Mr. Darcy).

I'm not interested in making any money out of this so it will be priced based on amazon's threshold. I just want people to read it. I worked like a dog on this book, and I like it, and I want you to like it.

Stay tuned.