The most surprising thing to me in the publishing process for The Mark was how much editing is done after a manuscript is sold.  As a first-time author, I’d assumed it would just be minor changes – copy edits, maybe tweaking a few plot points – since so much time is spent polishing the novel before submission.  Not [...]

In observance of the Word of the Week (observe), I’d like to share some observations from my author photo re-shoot last week.  I originally had pictures done back around May.  Observe: There wasn’t really anything wrong with them except everyone I know kept saying they didn’t look like me.  Which was weird since they were taken [...]

I think the guts of a novel can be broken down into three main categories:  Present Action – what’s happening now Backstory/Flashbacks – what’s happened in the past that helps you understand what’s happening now Internal Dialogue – what the characters think about this stuff The problem is that these usually come out in big [...]

Just finished copyedits for The Mark.  Copyedits are when punctuation is checked and consistency verified for the timeline and the story in general.  The corrections look like heiroglyphics on a paper copy of the manuscript:   I did not know what most of these marks meant.  Copyedits are not scary.  Not compared to the two earlier rounds of [...]