It’s Been a While

There’s a lot going on, a lot to be done, and time is quickly ticking past. But none of that is important right now. Next week, when test results come back and I’m either too worried or too ecstatic to properly function, sure, I think I’ll allow it. But right now? No. Right now, it’s time to talk work.

Editing

on The Nobodies is done. Or, well, it’s done to the extent I feel it needs to be done and I’m not going to do anymore unless a glaring error or copyright-infringing fuck up is found. The story’s tight, nuanced, fast-paced when needed and expository when not, and far as I can tell there isn’t a single passage that gives me pause. Because I’ve deleted them all. Or rewritten them. Mostly deleted, though. That was pretty cathartic.

Formatting’s all set, as well. I’d mostly gotten that done awhile back, so all the remained was touch-ups. For instance, I noticed the alignment was slightly off, so increased the first line of each new chapter from an exact spacing of 26.5 to 27.3. Looking at the book, no one except the most god-awful narcissist would’ve ever noticed it. But I did. Shit.

The cover, which I’ll show off soon as I get the proof in the mail and verify it’s as sexy wrapped as it looks in the demo page I printed, has been complete for ages, barring any updates to the pricing.

It was nice, but now it's gone.

The last thing to hold me up was one of the section pictures. Much like Sanity’s Flaw, I wanted to include extra tidbits in the print version to tease what was to come within the story. Unfortunately, my first take on the image for the first section, Emergence, was sorely lacking.

Not that I didn’t like it. I did. Still do. Mostly anyway. I have a few issues with it, but the main one is the lack of instant recognition. While I know what’s happening, it’s difficult to make out one man tackling another. I also don’t like the relative flatness of it. Compared to the others, there’s no depth, no real play on light sources. Though the rain and the garbage is neat.

I struggled for a while on what to replace it with, finally landing on a concept about a month ago after a late-night conversation with my wife (she’s good at that stuff). But it was only recently that I sat down on my new computer (did I mention I got a new computer? I got a new computer and it’s fucking glorious and everyone should always have new technology that doesn’t need a hammer upside its head to work) to hash it out. And I have to say, the new picture is leaps and bounds better than the last. I snuck a pic of the not-quite-finished version onto Snapchat last week, but added quite a bit more detail after deciding a few parts were somewhat lacking in definition.

What I’m basically saying across all this rambling is that The Nobodies will be releasing in print this July. Which just so happens to be next month in less than a week.

I hope you like it.