editing

Clouds

Published February 16, 2020 | By Roxanne Bland

Have you ever felt like there’s a cloud over your head? And it’s raining?

Yeah–that’s me, right now. But it isn’t just a cloud. It’s a damned thunderstorm. And it’s been thundering for a long time. *sigh* I could go into the gory details but I won’t, except to say it mostly has to do with the tax man. If I did go into detail, this post would be waaay too long. But I’m feeling beleaguered. Yes. That’s a good word.

The Moreva of Astoreth is back from the betas. Both have given me great advice but one beta’s is spectacular. She’s a developmental editor in real life. She didn’t give me the whole shebang (I would’ve had to pay for that). Her remarks though–I’ve a lot of work to do on it. I mean, not a total rewrite, or anything like that. Move stuff around, explain stuff early in the book. One thing she pointed out was as a reader, she would like to see an example of a ritual other than Ohra (which is an orgy). Explain Tehi’s religion more. Stuff I never even thought about. So the revised version is going to come out much later than I wanted, which means the sequel, When Gods Die, is going to come out later, too.

The Final Victim is with my editor. I’m pretty optimistic it won’t come back dipped in too much blood. Then I can get it formatted and all that stuff–that reminds me, I need to… Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Sittin’ Around Bullshittin’

Published November 8, 2019 | By Roxanne Bland

Editing The Moreva of Astoreth–still. Jesus fucking christ. The pages look as if they’ve been dipped in pee. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, it would have been blue pencil. Anyway, it’d have been nice if Adobe had used a different color, one that didn’t look so much like body waste. Like a nice magenta. Or even green. And just think–once I’ve finished the edits, I have to input them into the ms in Word. Yeah, I know I can directly edit the Adobe version, but I didn’t create it and it wasn’t shared. So I have to do it the hard way.

My new desk chairs are fabulous! The old ones were cheap and worn out. The height adjustment thingie didn’t work anymore, I had to roll up a towel and put it behind me for back support, ugh. Now I’m at the right height for working at the computer. My back doesn’t hurt when I stand up. Of course, it would help if I didn’t sit at the desk so much, but I forget and only get up when my ass starts hurting.

I got one of those Happy Lights. How come I ain’t happy? REFUND!!! No, seriously. I’ve been using it while I work–day job stuff, because it won’t fit on my personal desk. Too much shit lying around. The lack of available outlets on this side of the room is also a problem. So is it working? Well, I really can’t tell… Continue reading →

Posted in books, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Moving Along

Published July 12, 2019 | By Roxanne Bland

So I’m hard at work with this author thing. Took a rest from editing The Underground manuscript. I finished editing, but I want to go over the 1st 10 chapters or so to make sure I’m happy with the text. For the last go-round, I was working off the formatted copy where I’d highlighted changes I wanted to make, but around 10 I saw I needed to make changes that weren’t highlighted–i.e., the ones I missed. On the formatted draft, if I didn’t see yellow highlights, I passed over the corresponding text on the Word doc. Got to make sure it’s fine and dandy because I ain’t doing this again. Yes, the nice thing about self-publishing is that if you see something funky, you can pull the book and re-work it but it’s best not to fuck up in the first place. I cut myself some slack because there’s been a long learning curve, but I’m far along enough now that I know what NOT to do.

While I’ve been resting from editing, I’ve been working to build my author platform. I’m concentrating on Twitter at the moment, interacting with people, letting folks know I’m out there. It’s working. Still, I have some concerns. It seems that most of my new followers are also authors. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself but I don’t want to be author-heavy. What I want are people who are potential or actual readers to follow me. My fellow authors are not the… Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Pitfalls of Being Me

Published May 19, 2019 | By Roxanne Bland

Last summer, I was bedridden because of knee replacement surgery. So of course, I read books. Lots of books. Three of the books I read were my own. By then I hadn’t looked at them for a year or more, and I don’t know, I guess by reading them with fresh eyes, maybe I could better understand some of the stuff people had mentioned in their reviews.

I was flabbergasted. I could see every criticism that had been made. And all of them could have been avoided with better editing. Now I’ll be honest–one book I edited on my own using Grammarly because I didn’t have the money to hire a content editor, a copy editor, or proofreader. The second book had been extensively re-edited by a content pro but I didn’t have it copy edited or proofed because, after all that, I didn’t think the book needed it. The third book had undergone a copy edit but hadn’t been content edited or proofread, again because I didn’t think it needed it.

The spelling and grammar, however, were perfect. Because I’m like that.

I couldn’t believe I’d allowed my books to be published in that state. It doesn’t matter that two of my books won awards. If you haven’t guessed, I’m a perfectionist. and what I’d published was just horrifying. So as soon as I could hobble to my computer, I contacted my formatter and asked for the last formatted copy of the three books before they went to print.… Continue reading →

Posted in books | Tagged , , | Leave a comment
Visit Book Blogs

Link1 | Link2 | Link3

Copyright © 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Designed by Darryl Erentzen.