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I won’t get into all the ridiculous amount of obstacles I faced in getting the 2nd edition edit of book 4 done.  Everything from house issues, to eye problems in my left eye, to sleep issues, to whatever.  It was just one thing after another, but…at last…I’m happy to say that I’ve finally finished the 2nd edition re-edit, and I’ve added 25,401 words to the story, which is roughly the equivalent of about four full chapters worth of material.

So, what’s next?

Well, the next steps in order are:

• Spellchecking
• Write a new synopsis and edit the metadata.
• Create a new or altered graphic for the cover.
• Put the print version together.
• Create the cover for the print version.
• Publish the ebook and print versions.
• Get started on the 2nd edition re-edit of book 5.

I’m extremely happy with how these second edition re-edits are turning out.  In the first editions, the story was there, but I didn’t have the writing or editing skills that I have now, so I’m basically making these 2nd edition versions the way I truly wanted these stories to be now that I have the skills to do so.  What sucks is that it’s a 21 book series, so I still have a LONG way to go with the 2nd edition versions, but now that I’m back to work on them, I’m actually feeling really motivated.

Anyway, that’s it for now.  I finished editing the last two chapters this morning, and I haven’t had a chance to sleep yet, so I’ll probably just take the rest of the day off and start with my “To Do” list tomorrow.  I’d like to say it’ll take me a week or less to do all that, but that depends a lot on how long it takes me to do the new cover, and to come up with a synopsis I’m happy with.  The synopsis is always the hardest part of any book, so that usually takes some time to come up with.

I’m not promoting the series at all while I’m doing the 2nd editions.  I only want people to read the 2nd edition versions, so I’m not going to do any promotion whatsoever until I get them all done.  Then I’m going to hit it hard and really promote the hell out of the series.  That’s my plan anyway.

After a string of one thing after another that kept me away from my second pass re-edit of book four, I’m finally back to working on it.  The last thing that got in the way and cost me several more weeks was iritis in my left eye.  It’s a long story, but weeks later it’s finally good again, and I don’t have anything more that’s stopping me from getting back to work.  I’m really happy with the 2nd edition of book 4, and the 2nd editing pass always makes it even better, so by the time I’m finished, it’ll be the product I truly wanted it to be.

Anyway, time to get back to work.

Ever go through a period in your life, where everything conspires to stop you from doing what you want to get done?  Well, I have, and it’s been going on for months now.  I got the first pass done on book 4, and finished the first chapter of the second pass, and then all hell broke loose.  It’s been nothing but one thing after another for months now.  Currently it’s my left eye.  I got iritis in it somehow, so it’s all red and scratchy and out of focus.  Obviously that doesn’t lend itself to editing, so I’m kinda stuck until it gets better.  Hopefully it won’t take a hell of a long time to heal up so I can FINALLY get back to work.  I could sit here and list off all the other crap that’s been keeping me from getting stuff done, but aside from having our car totaled and having to get a new car a while back, most of it’s just personal crap that would take way too long to explain.

In any case, my goal is to get back to work on editing the 2nd edition of book 4 as soon as possible.

After an ungodly amount of time, I finally finished the first pass of the 2nd edition re-edit of book 4 in the series, Revenge.  During the first pass, I added 19,359 words, which is about three chapters worth of material.  The book started at 104,665 words, and is now sitting at 124,024 words after the first pass.  The second pass should go quite a bit faster since most of the heavy editing has been done already.  The second pass usually consists mostly of rewording things, checking for typos, etc…

When I finish the second pass, then I have to make a new cover for it, write a new synopsis, update the author notes, put together the print version, etc…  I still have a ways to go with it, but the main bulk of the work is out of the way now, so at least I’ve made some good progress. 🙂

For some reason, the 2nd edition re-edit of book 4 is taking me a hell of a long time.  I’m frankly embarrassed by how poorly I edited it to start with, so the 2nd edition is going to be a vast improvement over the original.  I’ve only finished chapter 14 on the first pass so far, and I’ve already added over 16K words to it.  To put that into perspective, that’s about 2.75 chapters worth of material that I’ve added so far, and I’m not even done with the first pass yet.  I’ve still got two chapters to go, and then I have to go through it a second time to double check for mistakes, things I want to re-word, things I want to add or embellish upon, etc…

Part of why it’s taken me this long so far is because I’ve been inordinately tired.  I spent most of my days feeling mentally cloudy, and I just can’t edit when I’m like that.  The final product would suffer, and I wouldn’t be happy with the end result, so I just have to edit when I’m clear and thinking properly.  I took this past week off from the gym, both for muscle recovery, and so I could catch up on my sleep, so hopefully now that I’m done with chapter 14, which was a very involved chapter, things will speed up once again.  The chapters with mostly dialog go a lot faster, so now that I’m past chapter 14, which was more descriptive and shorter on dialog, things should speed up once again.  At least, I hope so.  Anyway, I’ll keep plugging away at it.  Then after I finish this one, I’ve only got seventeen more to go. 😛

I took a long break after I finished editing the 2nd edition of the third book, simply because I’ve been having sleep issues again.  I’m only sleeping for a few hours at a time at the most, and when I am awake, I’m lacking the mental acuity to edit properly.  Despite this, I’ve decided to get back to work, taking advantage of whatever times I feel sharp enough to get some of it done.  It’s slowing down the process tremendously, but there’s very little I can do about it.  I did get the first chapter of Revenge re-edited though, and ended up adding almost 1,500 words to it, so I’m pretty happy about that.

Anyway, I’m just going to keep plugging away at it, because I’ve got another seventeen books to do after this one. 😛