Printing

Things continue to move along nicely. The MS should be ready for the printer by the first or second week in January. I do have to make a decision about the cover art, but that's only a matter of deciding which presentation is best when both options are great.

Of course, no matter how many times one goes through a manuscript to correct errors, there will still be some left lurking about. Found a stylistic problem yesterday and corrected it. Problem is, you can only read through a document so many times before you go psychologically blind to the content. Thankfully, I am satisfied that not many errors remain.

What a day!

Got it done today. It didn't start out that way, just thought I'd see what I might do to wrap things up with the manuscript and cover. Some hours later, maybe five or six, the MS is in PDF form ready for the printers, and so is the cover. You never know - every now and then it all comes together and the ability to simply see how to proceed and the mental set to get it done is there. And so it flows. Of course, then there are other days...

Still a lot of work to be done, the current manuscript PDF will likely not be the final document sent to the printer (although I think the cover is finished), but the setup is done, it works, and I have a printer lined up. All told, one BIG day.

Image

Somehow the image I selected did not upload correctly. I'll try again.

Moving along

Typesetting the manuscript is finished. Basically, typesetting is the process of making sure that the manuscript transfers smoothly from, say, MS Word where it was composed to InDesign where it will be prepared for printing and the addition of images and other effects. An important part of typesetting, to me, involves making sure that there are no widows or orphans and that the chapter breaks make sense and are clean and consistent with regard to font etc. chapter to chapter. The application does most of the work but you still have to go through the MS page by page because there are ALWAYS problems.

The final page count will be very close to 592. Here's a new image.

Happening Fast

Just a quick note here. Most of my effort has recently been directed to preparing Songs of Deep Green for publication. At this time I am looking at a publication date of April or May of 2010. There is new information at our site www.ardentpublishing.com on Volume II and more to come. This is a seafaring adventure unlike any you've imagined. It's exciting!

Also, check out our new FaceBook presence at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dale-B-Mattheis-Author-of-The-Alarai-Chronicles-series/195072465909