Monday, February 11, 2008

Page proofs

This weekend I worked on the second-pass page proofs for Wicked Game. I was pleasantly astonished to receive them at all--I don't think it happens very often, as usually the production schedule doesn't allow time for it. But this is my first book with Pocket, so maybe it's standard for them.

If nothing else, it gave me peace of mind that all my corrections from the last set of page proofs made it in (and any of you who have read the ARC know that they are legion). This time around it was tiny things, such as:

a) band names not being listed as "The" (e.g., "The White Stripes" instead of "the White Stripes")
b) one "blocking" flub I never noticed before (a cat jumps off the lap of a character who was standing up--oops!)
c) dialect "fixes." I was thrilled that the copyeditor didn't correct the dialect of my Jamaican or Mississipian characters (though he did attempt to "de-Pittsburgh" the hero), but the proofreader changed a couple of the Jamaican guy's phrases to correct English. Which made him sound, well, not Jamaican.

It was a great time for me to reread Wicked Game, as I'm in the last stages of the sequel's first draft. It reminded me of some important themes, character issues, continuing plot threads, etc.

Little things, too, like the fact that in Book One, a character is described as 'slim,' but in Book Two, he's buffed out. So clearly he needs to start going to the gym in the three months between books (story months, not publication months). But he has a life-changing event in Book One that causes him to start treating himself with more respect, so it totally makes sense that he would start working out, probably pretty religiously.

Speaking of which, my creaky elliptical machine is calling...


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Now playing: The Band Played Waltzing Matilda - The Pogues
via FoxyTunes

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