Adventures with Printing Copies

Over my trip at Gettysburg, I did manage to revisit Ange's (the main character) portion of my book 1, Adamant: Enemy of Elsinaire. I restored earlier drafts to get back to the girly, innocent Ange and even wrote a few sections where she and Nellwyn spat like real sisters do. This has felt amazingly essntial to the book as a whole, because as much as I love Ange and build her up into a force to be reckoned with, I've never really had a good hold on her as idealistic Ange. Now I do! Believe me, after reading the ultra masculine The Blade Itself (by Joe Abercrombie), a little dose of the female feels like a refreshing change.

So, right, I did some revising. I would like to have a couple of new satellite readers take a gander at it -- hence my adventures with copy rates. I figure I have a lot of binders around me with old drafts in them. Why don't I just copy the draft I'm printing off now, punch holes in it, and file it myself? Well, the problem with writing a 125K book, is that is A LOT of pages. Even with some margin fiddling, I'm looking at a little over 295 pages each copy. Office Max and Kinkos are telling me 9 cents per copy, which would mean about $80 before taxes. The UPS store is a bit cheaper at 6 cents a copy, but that's still $50 before taxes. So I found www.bestvaluecopy.com, where I can send my manuscript out and then have them ship me the copies at a very cool 2 cents per copy. YIPPEE! So that's what I'm planning on doing.

That has meant picking up my old N-I-P binders and removing those contents. Good grief but was I organized with that shiz. It's a little sad, though, taking out my friend' comments and pages, for instance. But I'm supplanting them with the newest version!

Also, I'm hoping this will free up some shelf space for my overflow of books!

P.S. I'm considering writing a whole new final chapter from Melandor Ormonde's perspective. Not sure how that would resonate though, but I'm contemplating it. Might make a cool lead-in for Book 2!

~X

Ange dusted-off

Oh, Ange. I've neglected you. I should have revised your sections first, before I revised anything. But now I've gotten warm and cozy with you, and everything in Book 1 is now in hand. Not only did I add a new section here you have a fight with your sister Nellwyn (as sisters do), but you also have a new encounter with Caius, which helps substantiate your whole relationship with him. All of this means you're a real character, going through a real arc. The book is the stronger for it.

So another read-through, and I'll start examining another character. I'm quite pleased at this point, especially as revising Ange's section affected all the others -- in a good way. I had to look at scenes involving all the other major characters.

So yes, progress is being made. I hope to have a working copy in August to give to my satellite readers. Then I'll be querying again in the Fall!

~X