State of the Novel AddressPOSTED SEP 21, 2011

My fellow spec-fic fans,

Our industry stands at a crossroads today. All our paperbacks are being outsourced to Kindles, while phenomena such as NaNoWriMo are driving up the costs of getting noticed by publishers. If you want to resist the future, Congress, and if you care about my approval rating, you should pass this bill right away. <say optimistic thing> <say optimistic thing>

Oops... channeled Obama for a minute there...

I again find myself in the process of editing my novel Caffeine. This was an expected step before publication, and much anticipated because I wasn't doing it myself anymore. Through the month of October every sliver of free time will go toward the final edits. And I do mean final. With Splashdown's seal of approval the writing part of my brain finally moves on to the second book. If future publishers talk about edits, I'll just tell 'em the author's dead. ;)

I'm hoping to have the beta Fourth Draft done in time for That Day, Sep 30, the second anniversary of Caffeine's Third Draft being completed (which became the book's first release two weeks later). As it was two years ago, the pressure is on to get the manuscript as tight as I can now. As it was two years ago, I'm surprised at some of the typos and things which have slipped by to this point, and cringe at the thought of what might still be slipping by. "that that"? Really? Three times?

BTW, in memory of all the occurrences of the word "that" which have been cut in the Fourth Draft, I've officially added a strikethrough to the holiday name, That Day.

Besides the that issue, I'm also taking this opportunity to address the perception that my book is long (though I still disagree). The word count is dropping and that can't hurt: I'm projecting this draft will dip below the important 120K line. There is also toying with the book structure. I can't split up chapters and I decided against getting rid of the intros for them, but one trick I might pull is "Part One. Part Two. Part Three." The book is already divided this way, I've just omitted them in previous releases. Longer works (which 120K appears to be by 21st century standards!) are commonly formatted this way, making them seem like a series of short books in one volume. Caffeine's divisions are already there, might as well use them.

Part I = Chapters 1-5
Part II = Chapters 6-11
Part III = Chapters 12-17

For up-to-the-minute news on Caffeine's Splashdown release and Best Seller status, I invite you to "like" its Facebook Page, Caffeine IV .

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