I had a very odd 36 hour period during the last day or two of my honeymoon.
Driving back from DragonCon, we made a stop in Virginia. We had dinner with friends, and probably would have had more meals with more friends if we had planned in advance. Anyway, one of those friends were the Wrights. We had seen them at the wedding, but if you can imagine socializing at a wedding, you can understand why seeing them again so soon after wasn't out of the line of reasoning.
Anyway, on the way out, I mentioned RavenCon, since it was the nearest Convention I knew of in their area. If I recall correctly, there were already plans to do a Superversive meetup at RavenCon, perhaps even a booth. Which is cool, of course. My publisher resides in Alabama and drove to LibertyCon the year before. Maybe the Newquists could drive up to RavenCon?
Jagi said she'd talk to Russell the next day. It was one of the last exchanges we had when we were on the way out the door. Literally, the door was open for a good three minutes as we had this conversation.
The next morning, on our way up I-95, Russell messages me. I figure it had to do with RavenCon.
It wasn't.
Russell had found someone to be my own personal editor. Why, you ask? Well, my writing speed is such that it's been a running gag around the other authors of Silver Empires. I had even mentioned during one conversation that I had "a 13 book Space Opera series outlined, and three novels already drafted ....I'm sorry, did I say 3? I mean 5. I forgot that I had drafted the other two."
.... Sometime after that conversation, where I dropped two hundred thousands words of Space opera on my publishers, the running gag expanded.
So, you can understand why they hired an editor just for me.
And yes, the Space Opera is going to be the thing after Saint Tommy is over. All five -six books should be out by April, if I have my guess correct.
But you can imagine what editing all this stuff would feel like.
So, this message about the new editor sounded like fun. "Why?" we asked Russell (I drove, my wife typed). "Who was it?"
"Would Jagi be Okay?"
I didn't crash the car while going "YYYEEEESSSS" but it was a near run thing.
But, no. I've worked with Jagi on four novels already -- two novels of the space opera, and two of Saint Tommy, NYPD (Hell Spawn and Death Cult). You know how nice it is for someone who gets what you're trying to do, and informs you of how to do it better? And without being either pedantic or obnoxious? It's awesome.
It's "Here, let me inform you of how to do this in two sentences with an example" versus "Here, let me talk down to you about what I read in this book once and go on for paragraphs about something that doesn't even apply to you. And if you don't see how it applies to you, then you're difficult to work with and a whiner."
Yes, I've had the latter happen.
Obviously, Jagi's talents comes from years of experience. This isn't something that comes merely from reading books on editing and writing. This comes from having written books, and having edited a lot of other people's work.
Granted, I'm relatively certain that she wants to declare war on my use of commas. But if that's the biggest problem we have? I'll take it.
See how her work turns out with the release of Hell Spawn.
Driving back from DragonCon, we made a stop in Virginia. We had dinner with friends, and probably would have had more meals with more friends if we had planned in advance. Anyway, one of those friends were the Wrights. We had seen them at the wedding, but if you can imagine socializing at a wedding, you can understand why seeing them again so soon after wasn't out of the line of reasoning.
Anyway, on the way out, I mentioned RavenCon, since it was the nearest Convention I knew of in their area. If I recall correctly, there were already plans to do a Superversive meetup at RavenCon, perhaps even a booth. Which is cool, of course. My publisher resides in Alabama and drove to LibertyCon the year before. Maybe the Newquists could drive up to RavenCon?
Jagi said she'd talk to Russell the next day. It was one of the last exchanges we had when we were on the way out the door. Literally, the door was open for a good three minutes as we had this conversation.
The next morning, on our way up I-95, Russell messages me. I figure it had to do with RavenCon.
It wasn't.
Russell had found someone to be my own personal editor. Why, you ask? Well, my writing speed is such that it's been a running gag around the other authors of Silver Empires. I had even mentioned during one conversation that I had "a 13 book Space Opera series outlined, and three novels already drafted ....I'm sorry, did I say 3? I mean 5. I forgot that I had drafted the other two."
.... Sometime after that conversation, where I dropped two hundred thousands words of Space opera on my publishers, the running gag expanded.
Live footage of me trying to keep up with editing all the books @DeclanFinnBooks keeps writing pic.twitter.com/fTJlIYhRe9— Morgon Newquist (@kevasidhe) June 6, 2018
So, you can understand why they hired an editor just for me.
And yes, the Space Opera is going to be the thing after Saint Tommy is over. All five -six books should be out by April, if I have my guess correct.
But you can imagine what editing all this stuff would feel like.
So, this message about the new editor sounded like fun. "Why?" we asked Russell (I drove, my wife typed). "Who was it?"
"Would Jagi be Okay?"
I didn't crash the car while going "YYYEEEESSSS" but it was a near run thing.
But, no. I've worked with Jagi on four novels already -- two novels of the space opera, and two of Saint Tommy, NYPD (Hell Spawn and Death Cult). You know how nice it is for someone who gets what you're trying to do, and informs you of how to do it better? And without being either pedantic or obnoxious? It's awesome.
It's "Here, let me inform you of how to do this in two sentences with an example" versus "Here, let me talk down to you about what I read in this book once and go on for paragraphs about something that doesn't even apply to you. And if you don't see how it applies to you, then you're difficult to work with and a whiner."
Yes, I've had the latter happen.
Obviously, Jagi's talents comes from years of experience. This isn't something that comes merely from reading books on editing and writing. This comes from having written books, and having edited a lot of other people's work.
Granted, I'm relatively certain that she wants to declare war on my use of commas. But if that's the biggest problem we have? I'll take it.
See how her work turns out with the release of Hell Spawn.
Thanks, Declan!
ReplyDeleteActually, your comma use is like having the icing off occasionally on a nice cake. I have writers, God bless 'em, where the commas are wrong in every sentence. ;-)