The hold-in-your-hand tangible books arrived mid-week last and I spent the next few days earnestly editing the final and resolving volume of the trilogy. Once I got stuck into it, the editing moved along at pace; all I had to do was correct with scribbled biro in the text, fold the page over where I wanted to return to, and carry on reading.
When I finished the read-through, and got the corrections sorted, then I launched Scivener again and followed my nose through the scenes from front to end with all of the necessary corrections. Finished that neatly and uploaded the content files back to the Amazon and HiddenGemsBooks.com platforms for service. Felt very satisfied with myself.
Until the panic, on when was it, yesterday morning, when I thought I’d just do another quick search for the ‘Daughters of Eden’ title on Amazon, to see if all was fine. Behold: there are at least three books with the same or very similar title served on Amazon.co.uk and my own offering was lost and adrift about three or four pages down. Time for a quick re-think!
‘Daughters of Eden’ quickly became ‘Daughters in Eden‘ which feels more like the point of the novel, actually. Nobody else seems to have attached their own efforts to that title. So I re-jigged things (four content files to re-configure and two covers as well), uploaded again to the servers, and by Sunday evening got the all-clear on the final paperback versions. Whew!
This morning, only 12 hours later, I received word from HiddenGemsBooks.com that my files must be ready imminently for distribution to interested readers, as the meta-data would be going out on Thursday the 21st of April. But I could smile to myself: it’s sorted! All files present and accounted for. Meanwhile, I’ve managed to acquire another three author’s copies of Daughters in Eden for family to have and to hold.
When and if reviews of a positive nature start to come in from the HiddenGemsBooks reviewers, I shall attempt another sort of gambit to try to get a bit of publicity for the last volume. I’ve found sfbook.com which is a non-profit site dedicated to reviewing current science fiction books. If I’ve got a little bit of kudos from friendly first readers of my ARC distribution, I shall try to inveigle an editor at SFbook to peruse and review my work. Every step of the way, of course, is fraught with danger and real potential for disappointment.
But I must persevere; I’ve come this far, and I would like to pursue this effort to the end. I know that ‘daughters’ resolves the trilogy in a similar (and yet in entirely unexpected particulars!) way to what I’d envisioned way back at the beginning of this project, spring 2019 or thereabouts. Since we’re now in the spring of ’22, that must make this a three year project.
I hope, I do earnestly hope, that my writing is getting better, that in this ‘daughters’ book, parameters of plot, characterisation, description, dialogue, metaphor and simile, theme and narrative arc, are another few steps upward on my own writing odyssey.
When I’m satisfied that I’ve done everything I can to present this trilogy to the world, then I can rest for a bit, before I embark on my next project, the historical novel Keep Me in Your Heart. But I really can’t think about that until the marketing/promotions effort for my science fiction project is finalised.
Biome NE47 