Storm Warnings

I discovered yesterday that doing work that requires a lot of concentration, like proofreading, is very difficult when the weather radio keeps going off. I had four warnings yesterday -- flash flood, severe thunderstorm, tornado, another flash flood. None of them directly affected my area, but they were in my county, so the radio went off with an earsplitting shriek and then an eerie disembodied robotic voice describing the situation. That then led to me going online or turning on the TV to find out what the situation really was. The afternoon was almost a total wash for work, so I ended up working in the evening and a little bit late at night.

Today seems nicer, so I'm hoping to make more progress. I want to get this book to my agent on Monday so I can get back into writing the sequel and get this one ready for publication. Then I'll only have a couple of urgent projects in the works, since I'm also working to get the first four books in the Enchanted Inc. series released digitally outside North America. They've been translated in some places, but the way the rights were granted to Random House kept the English editions from being available as e-books worldwide. Since I have those rights, I'm rectifying that, but that means getting the text ready, licensing the art directly from the artist, and getting new covers designed and new cover copy written (since all that was done by Random House and I can't steal their work). Getting the text ready has been a bit of a challenge because I wrote the earlier books in something closer to true manuscript format, so there's underlining instead of italics, and there's some Word formatting stuff that has to be stripped. I also put in the copy editor's changes in track changes mode so I could more easily check the proof pages, and so I have to go in and accept changes and then make sure that doesn't introduce new errors.

For those still hoping for more books in this series, I'm afraid that even rereading them isn't sparking new ideas. I still love those books and the characters, but I can now read them almost like a reader and not like the writer. That door really seems to have closed for now. I know readers want more, and I understand that as a reader, but as a writer, I'm okay with it. I told the story I wanted to tell, and it actually went on for two more books beyond what I planned. I thought I was done with #5, but the Japanese publisher asked for more, so I came up with something else, and then that gave me an idea for book 7. While writing that one, though, I think I knew all along it was probably the end. But you never know what may one day strike me, so I'm not going to say it's definitely over. Just don't hold your breath. I have a lot of other ideas begging to be written.

Which means I probably ought to get to work, huh? Oh, and there's that map I need to finish.