Final Check

Well, that’s about it for The Pale Summer.

The changes to the synopsis and the manuscript itself have all been made. I went through them both one last time to find anymore errors that I might have missed the last few times ’round and, unsurprisingly, found a few. But then that’s to be expected to some degree. Even when you get as far as the actual printing of the book, with all those words, somehow a few always manage to escape even the most eagle-eyed proof readers.

The normal cover page has been printed out. If you’re not familiar with the format, all the pertinent information is at the top. In my case, this means I have the full contact details of my agent, and then right under all that, the tag “Representing: Wayne Santos”. On the right, I have an approximate word count. When the 1st draft was done, the thing weighed in at over 112, 000 words. After the revisions, it’s gone down to 109,000. That’s roughly 11 pages chopped out. It’s certainly possible that should an editor look at it, still more will go, but I’ll wait and see on that. Oh yeah, and of course smack dab in the center is the title of the book with my name under it.

The “good” book cover will also be included, though I’ll probably send an e-mail to my agent explaining why exactly that’s in there. Included along with the manuscript and a 9 page synopsis will be a CD with both the manuscript and synopsis files burned on it. Tomorrow both documents will be printed out, courtesy of some place near where the Fiance works, and then it’ll be mailed off to America and more or less be permanently beyond my control with nothing to do but wait.

Hopefully, third time really will be the charm.

It will be good day indeed when the sending out of a book is not a nerve wracking experience filled with the litany of “Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease…” running itself over and over again in my head.

But until then the writing continues.

Next up, reading more children’s books. Well, weird ones, anyway. I’m going to be going through Clive Barker’s The Thief of Always again to take more careful note of the difference between the writing he does there, and the writing he does in something like, say, Imajica, or The Great and Secret Show or Weaveworld.