Hi Everyone!

It’s February 13, so happy birthday to me!  The universe gave me a birthday gift in the form of at least 2 feet of snow on the ground and a snow day at the University.  Yay!

Of course I’m writing to you not about my birthday, but about some news I’d like to share.  I’ve finished my first editing pass through “More Fun and Games,” the sequel to “It’s All Fun and Games!”  I hadn’t even looked at it since penning it during NaNoWriMo back in 2011, and I’m pleased to announce that it’s a fun little story, with quite a few twists and turns.  The story follows the friends to the busy streets of Providence City as they make their way east and attempt to establish alliances to help them on their quest.

I do all the editing by hand on paper, and then I go back to the computer to input all the changes, working through wording and making other edits as I go.  This acts as a second full editing pass.  Once all the writing has been cleaned up (and some of it was pretty messy), I’ll then turn to think about bigger structural and story continuity issues that may need to be addressed.  Only once that has been done will I start seriously looking at how to bring the book to market.

I’ve been at it for about a month now, and finally finished, so wanted to share.  I’m proud of the story and can definitely see it turning into something everyone will enjoy. 

And now some announcements -

I’ll have a table at the Bangor Toy and Comic Con at the Cross Center over Memorial Day weekend, so if you’re in the area, feel free to stop on by and say hello!

More immediately, I’ll be at TotalCon at its new home in Marlborough, MA the weekend of February 25th, mostly playing in the Pathfinder Society area.  Again, feel free to say hi!

Lastly, since it’s my birthday, if you wanted to give me a present, head over to Amazon or Goodreads and leave me a review!  I’m up to nearly 80 on Amazon, averaging 4.6 stars.  I’d love to break the 100 review barrier!

Some of you folks may get this twice, once from Inkshares and once from my own mailing list.  I apologize for the spam, but am trying to be more savvy about marketing stuff and getting more eyeballs on my posts.

Thanks again for all your support!

Dave

Just a quick update on where things stand. In the next 24 hours we should be done with developmental editing and sending the manuscript over to copy editing. The manuscript is in really good shape. There are still some typos to fix and a few scenes that we’re working on, but I’m anticipating we’ll knock those out tonight/tomorrow morning.

Copy editing should take about a couple of weeks, meaning we should have a final version of the manuscript going into formatting on the last week of the month. This will enable Inkshares to print "galleys" (promotional versions of the book) by the end of the month, which is very exciting.

In the mean time, I need to do my "author picture" for the inside sleeve of the book. I have something cool in mind, but as I’m not very photogenic, it may not work out. Still, I’ve enlisted the services of my friend and photographer Lai Long whom I believe will endeavor to make photographic miracles happen.

I’m told everything is all set for the book launch at San Diego Comic Con in July. I’m not really sure exactly what it is that we’ll be doing there to promote the book. Maybe I’ll just do a little interpretive teleportation dance while wearing a futuristic LED suit. Probably not that.

So excited you guys. Jazz hands!

Tal