I’ve had this for ages, but now that it’s up on Amazon I figure it’s as public as you can get. This is actually the early draft cover so the final will look somewhat different, but this gives you an idea. Click here for a look.

I’ve now gone through the copyedited ms and am starting to deal with the queries. For anyone unfamiliar with this I’ll explain. The copy editor is given his or her marching orders from the editor – “Dear god, this is a mess, fix it!” to “A light pass is all that’s needed.” When the copy editor returns the ms there are typically post-its with queries throughout asking for clarification (more places are moving toward doing this electronically, but thankfully for this dinosaur we’re still using paper) and noting any incongruence. The queries will range from noting that the color of a character’s hair has changed from one chapter to another to questioning if a word or term sounds appropriate to the time period in question and so on. The editor will look through these first and deal with or remove any queries that are easy to deal with and/or may enrage or otherwise upset the author. The editor then has his/her assistant make a copy of the copyedited ms to ensure all this work isn’t lost (and what loads of fun that is copying a ms with post-its sticking all over it.) The copy is then sent to the author with a very short time frame to get it back to the editor. This is done for two reasons: 1, because time is always of the essence, and 2, because it gives the author less time to make massive rewrites. As I’ve been reading I’ve found a few areas I want to tweak, but overall I’m pleased with the copyedit (the copyeditor made some great catches) and looking forward to the next stage.

I’ll try to keep a running post as the book moves toward the pub date in July and am happy to answer questions if anyone is curious about how all this works. Keep in mind, though, that my split personality of editor-author makes me about the worst possible example as I know just enough to be really, really dangerous.

I’ve never tired of talking about the works of George MacDonald Fraser. While a lot of people knew his Flashman series, fewer knew of his nonfiction work, especially his masterpiece Quartered Safe Out Here. I first read it while doing my Masters after my thesis adviser gave me a copy. Not only is it aggressively honest, its observation of the tiniest details is like staring at a Faberge egg and finding new and even more intricate bits you missed the first ten times before. I would highly recommend Quartered Safe to anyone looking to improve the writing of characters, narrative, humor, poignancy, action, and most definitely dialogue. The man was a master.

As it happens I just received the copyedited ms of A Darkness Forged in Fire yesterday and am going through the corrections now. I had always planned to acknowledge my admiration and debt to MacDonald Fraser and had hoped he would have been pleased that he inspired someone as profoundly as he did me. It’ll be a bitter sweet moment when I write that acknowledgment now.

Read here

Fraser is probably best known for his Flashman series and for penning the James Bond movie Octopussy. It’s in the field of nonfiction, however, where I think he was a true genius. Quartered Safe Out Here is simply one of the best personal memoirs ever written of WWII. Its raw honesty, brash humor and unflinching look at life as a soldier is as close as most of us will ever get to understanding what it was like. I know I was heavily influenced by this book and the ultimate rogue, Flashman, in writing the Iron Elves and I had always hoped I’d get the chance to tell him that. I waited, and now the chance is gone.

Up to this point I’ve more or less kept my blogging to all things publishing, but I just couldn’t stay quiet after this latest sermon masquerading as an ad by Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. A cross, a Christmas tree (where exactly were these sold in Bethlehem?) and the belief that “What really matters is the celebration and birth of Christ and being with family and friends.” Really? Has he met my family? Seriously though, is there no room in Huckabee’s America for Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists? Couldn’t he have wished Christians a Merry Christmas and the rest of us Happy Holidays? Or better yet, donated his air time to something more deserving, like a clothing drive for those poor Hooters girls that will be freezing in those little shorts? Well, perhaps not that.

Theocracies are not conducive to free thought, free will, or women (or gays.) We already have a government that thinks waterboarding (which is drowning, not the sensation of drowning but actual drowning) is some kind of water sport. Do we really want one led by a man who believes that his god wants him to rule the world…oh, yeah, the last seven years…aw hell.