Steady as she goes, Cap'n...

It's been three months since my last update about the progress of REMANENCE, the sequel to FLUENCY, so I thought I'd check in briefly. If you scroll down to the previous post, you'll see the timeline I've set up. It's still 100% in play without any delays.

I'm still on target for a March release. The exact day is yet to be determined (possibly I'll be prepared to give one by late February or early March). I could give you an exact date now, but that would make life very uncomfortable for me, as I either push myself beyond my limits, or sit on my hands for a week after it's done, waiting for that date to arrive. I'd rather just publish it when it's done.

You want to know when that day arrives? Sign up for my newsletter (and get the bonus of a free story). I hate spam, so I don't send more than a few emails a year. Your email address is safe with me. I'll only send you mail when I have something important to say.

People are asking for pre-orders. I'm not going to do those. They actually work against indie authors and I don't want to promo something that's not ready for sale. I won't be having a book launch party or a cover release with a bunch of fanfare. That's not my style. I've participated (reluctantly) in some of these things for other authors or anthologies but I don't enjoy them and I don't think they help an author's career. I don't need to do an AMA because I'm always available to answer questions here, on Twitter, or Facebook. Okay, that's enough curmudgeon-Jen for today.

Here's what has happened so far:

I wrote a first draft of the novel: Remanence.

I did my own first revision of the novel.

I passed that novel on to my professional editor to do a developmental edit (this is story level editing) and simultaneously asked about ten people to read it. Those people include my IRL (in real life) writing group/critique partners, a NASA/JPL engineer, an independent aeronautic engineer, a theoretical physicist and a couple of general readers.

I am now scouring the notes I received and assessing each one with a good old fashioned gut check. If someone noted a blind spot and I think it's valid, I'm fixing it. If something was too hard to understand, I'm clarifying it. If a scene is missing, I'm adding it. And so on. It's tedious work, but also really rewarding, because a novel is taking shape that I am really proud of. I'm nearing the end of this process now. I've been working around the clock. No tv time for me. It's all work and very little play around here until this is done.

The next step starts in two weeks when my professional editor will take the manuscript and do a thorough line edit. That will look at the novel more at a sentence level than the story level. He'll be looking for homophones, grammar errors, typos--as well as redundancies in the narrative, overused words, poorly constructed sentences, unclear passages and so on. It's a critical step in making a book as clean and readable for you, the reader. I won't skip it.

While my editor has the book I will be finalizing the covers for the ebook and paperback and making up a glossary to tack on to the end. I'm also hoping to find time to set up a giveaway as a thank you for all my dedicated readers.

Once the editor gives me the manuscript back, I will make the corrections, then I publish. I'm predicting that will be the third week of March, but anything could happen. Stay tuned.

These are exciting times! Read on!