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Copy edits for Alliance

Alliance. Book 2 in the Linesman series
Alliance. Book 2 in the Linesman series

The copy edits for ALLIANCE arrived yesterday.

Oh, my.

We said we’d do better than we did with LINESMAN, and we did, but not by much.

At least the issues aren’t quite the same.

We knew we had to change our Australian spelling to US spelling at the end, but did we? No.

Realise, rumour and defence became realize, rumor and defense. Words like travelled and councillor became traveled and councilor.

There were still a few of the dreaded serial commas. That is, a comma before the ‘and’ in a list (aka the ‘Oxford comma’). But we were better this time.

In fact, we need to work on commas in general. And on our capitalisation. (Or should that be capitalization?)

Trust me, you think you have a good grasp of grammar, but when you see a good copy editor go through your manuscript you realise (realize) that what you think is a lot different to what you know.

We have a goal to get down to minimal copy edits on a 100,000 word novel. Under a hundred edits would be nice.

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Alliance book cover

We saw the final artwork for the cover of Alliance today.

It’s awesome.

The cover of book two, Alliance
The cover of book two, Alliance

The artist is Bruce Jensen again. He did the Linesman cover too, and the two covers look great side-by-side.

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Book news

Where we’ve been on the internet

This week, it’s all about editing. We’re busy working on Alliance.

We have also done some guest posts for Linesman in the last month, so rather than leave you with nothing to read—if you missed any of our guest posts—here is an update.

Firstly though we would like to say a big thank you to John Scalzi, Chuck Wendig, Mary Robinette Kowal for providing great support, not just to us, but to all writers. And a huge thank you to Sally, at The Qwillery, for her support for both us and all other debut authors, especially in our genre. Thank you all.

Without further ado, in order of posting:

July 2, 2015: John Scalzi posted our Big Idea for Linesman. Here we talk about where the idea for Linesman came from.

July 3, 2015: Interview with The Qwillery about writing in general, and about and Linesman.

July 9, 2015: Five things we learned writing Linesman, on Chuck Wendig’s site.

July 14, 2015: Mary Robinette Kowal posted Our Favorite Bit of Linesman on her site.

July 17, 2015: The Qwillery very generously allow us a guest post spot. This time we are talking about how we co-write.

And if you are still looking for something to read, there is always the book itself. You can read the first chapter by clicking on the link from the front page of our blog. (This is the ARC version, so it may have some typos.) Or you can read a longer extract on the Penguin Random House site, on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Enjoy

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Book news

Released today

Linesman now available at all good bookstores
Linesman now available at all good bookstores

Need we say more?

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Book news

Sample chapter now available

We’ve added  a sample chapter of LINESMAN.  It’s here, if you want to read it.

This chapter comes from the advanced reader copy (ARC), which is the uncorrected proof.  If you’re familiar with ARCs you’ll know there may be typos, or even some bad grammar. Hopefully we’ll have caught it by this stage, but you never know.

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Book news

Book news

ARC_Linesman

ARCs for LINESMAN

Early this week we got advanced reader copies (ARCs) for LINESMAN.

ARCs are the typeset versions of the book before the final proofing. The cover is plain—you can see that by the photo—and it still has some typos in it, but it looks like a book.

We haven’t worked out what to do with all them yet, but we’ll get there.

ALLIANCE delivered

Our second book, tentatively titled ALLIANCE, has been sent to our editor.

From here we sit back and wait* until she comes back with changes for us to make.

We honestly don’t know what she’ll make of book two. We’re still in that newbie stage where we can’t truly judge our own writing.

The story’s probably okay, but does it work as a second book in a series? Have we delivered what the editor was expecting? Is it a book that readers of LINESMAN will like? We’re over our word count, could we have tidied the book up more?

* We don’t wait really. We write. We’re deep into the first draft of book three, which is coming along well.

Book three

According to our writing plan, we should be half-way through the first draft of book three by now. We’re not that far yet, but we’re happy with how it’s going. The writing is first-draft awful, but the story works.

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Book news

Proofs for Linesman

Got the proofs back for LINESMAN today.

It’s pretty cool, seeing your typeset pages for the first time.  It looks like a real book.

In other book news:

  • We’re finishing the last draft of book two before we send it to our editor. That’s s due by 1st May
  • After the 1st May—or before, if we can make it—it’s back to draft one of book three.
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Book news Progress report

Linesman cover

We’re delighted to finally be able to show off our cover for LINESMAN, the first book in our brand new science fiction series. We are delighted with it. Doesn’t it look great.

The artist is Bruce Jensen.

Release date: 30 June 2015
Release date: 30 June 2015

 

And … it’s appearing on book sites, And … it’s available for pre-order. Six months out. Yay!