Some stuff…

If you haven’t read book 2, please don’t look. I tried to avoid spoilers, but…

Had somebody ask…

Is this a trilogy?

Nope.  Never said I’d stop at three books.  I always saw more than three…have several more books in mind, although there’s a definite end in mind.  If things go well, I’d like to write books about Justin, and once he grows up more…Doyle, though.  After I finish Kit’s story.  I think. Maybe.

Are you doing a love triangle thing?

 

I hate doing spoilers, but people want to know about Justin.  Your answer is in book 3.  But I have an odd and annoying habit of doing things that people don’t expect.  Or the opposite.  Cuz it’s fun. Or maybe because that’s the direction the story goes.  Sometimes both.

Did you have to do that???

Well, yeah.  I’m just the narrator.  The story unfolded in my head and that’s the way it unfolded.  I can’t force the story to go any way other than the direction it’s meant to go.

What the hell happened with the problems with the ebook?

I honestly can’t explain that.  There was obviously a delivery error on part of the distributor.  I know that.  They are taking steps to prevent such a problem in the future.  It sucks.  It’s done.  Thank God.

2014 on BROKEN BLADE…WHY????

Well… I just finished it.  Really.  Like about three weeks ago.  Now it has to be edited.   Then it has to come back to me. Then go back to the editor.  Then go to a line editor.  Then I plan to have a few more people read it.  I need cover stuff done. I need the blurb.  Promo.  All of that stuff takes a lot of time and I have to work it all in around deadlines. Plus, there is upfront cost involved.  Need to have that factored into my schedule as well.

I found errors–

I’m sorry.  But…well, the errors are probably there to stay unless it’s something glaring and huge, like pages missing or something hugely horrendous (like oh, say the wrong file–that would never happen, right?).  Why are the errors there?  Don’t authors always want their best?  Yes, we do.

But…here’s the thing.

A self published book just isn’t likely to get the treatment that a traditionally published book gets.  My content editor read NIGHT BLADE (and BLADE SONG) several times. I read each book probably ten times over, not including the times they came back to me from the editor…these are the extra times looking for typos, etc.  Both had line editors.  There were still typos.  Traditionally pubbed books have probably five times as many people looking over them…but feasibly, I can’t afford that.  If I spent that money, I wouldn’t be able to afford to publish the books at all.  So I do the best I can and then I have to accept that there are going to be things I miss.  I plan to look for beta readers for future books and already have a few lines out on that.

Why can’t I fix the problems if they are pointed out?  Several reasons–one, I don’t ever want to touch the files on NIGHT BLADE again.  I think if I do, the space time continuum will explode.  I know that sounds extreme, but I was in contact, hourly, with my contact at the distributor for almost three days during business hours, trying to figure out the problem with NIGHT BLADE.  I’m all but terrified to touch it again.

Aside from my paranoias… there is again, cost and time involved.  Fixing the errors isn’t as easy as opening a word doc.  I have to edit it.  Send it off to the formatter.  Pay the formatter.  Send files back to the distributor.  Re-upload to the places where I handle the distribution myself.  It’s a considerable amount of time invested.  It’s either do that…and keep doing because if I do it for one error, I know myself, I’ll keep doing it for all of them. I’m sort of spastic that way.  Or I let it go and know I did the best I could while it was ‘my’ hands.  It’s not longer in ‘my’ hands alone… it’s out there, in the wild, so to speak.

If I’m constantly fixing/searching for problems on the self pubbed books, I’m not spending the time on future books.  I don’t think that’s the smartest investment of my time.

In the end, the errors are mine, I accept them and I hope they don’t detract from the story too much.  And I’ll try to find more ways to improve in the future… that’s the best I can do.