Two more books ready to go.

Well, this never happens.  I just had two hard jobs turn into two easy jobs.

First of all, I thought it would take six days to finish transcribing and then reading and copy-editing Sometimes a Dragon.  It took three days.  I just couldn't find that many problems.

Then I decided that I would take whatever the professional copy-editor had done to Nearly Human and work on it for the next eight days or so before sending it off.  But the writing program we're using means I only have to "click" approval or not, and after a couple of hours I was done, even having to write from the notes she also included.

I find I usually accept these kinds of revisions -- if a reader comes across a sentence that doesn't quite work, and they have a suggestion for improvement, I find they are almost always right.  It's as silly thing for a writer to object to.

Turns out, she has done about 70% of the book.  She's agreed to do the last 30% of the book in the next week.

She seems like a pretty persnickety reader, not afraid to make suggestions and corrections, and she didn't find anywhere the number of inconsistencies and continuity problems I thought she would.

 She called it a "terrific story" and the publisher would be sure to like it... heh.  Well -- I am paying her, so maybe I should take it with a grain of salt.

I'm not really expecting Nearly Human to be accepted by the horror publisher -- who after all is taking open submissions so all he really agreed to is what he was already offering.  The book, while having horror elements, may not be horror enough.

 But here's the thing --  I do think both books are vastly improved from earlier versions.

There is a kind of exponential improvement to books sometimes, each version being twice as good as the previous version, which means that Nearly Human isn't just 3 times better than the first version, but 8 times better.  Well, maybe not that much, but you get the idea.

That idea breaks down at some point, of course, or else the next version would be 16 times better....

Thing is, most people only read my first versions, so they never get to see the improvements.  (Also explains why people have been surprised in the past when I actually got published...)  Much of that is my own fault, because I'm usually convinced that whatever version I currently have is the best one.

I'm proud of being persistent with both of these books, when I could have given up, or said -- "good enough."

This time I didn't do that.  Or maybe I should say, still haven't done that.  Though I'm sending Nearly Human off to a publisher because of an opportunity.    But if there is an chance to improve the book, when I get it back, I won't be opposed to trying again.

Same with Sometimes a Dragon.  In fact, I'm very purposely setting it aside for a minimum of a few months and then coming back to look at it.

So that leaves me time to actually finish off Deviltree as well.  Linda did a copyedit, and Martha is looking at it now.  So a quick incorporation of their ideas, and that book will be done, too.  Then I can finally concentrate on writing something new.

Suddenly, what seemed like a log jam is clearing up.

My intention is to write the second book in the LORE series (The Reluctant Wizard is book 1.)  But I wouldn't be adverse to writing sequels to either Nearly Human or Death of an Immortal.

Nearly Human is pretty good, I think.  Time to start sending my baby into the world.