Saturday November 30, 2024

Starting the publishing process!

Welcome, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. In this daily newsletter, I reflect on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully, including my struggles to maintain a balanced life, what I listen to, read, and watch for entertainment, and occasional bits of information I’ve gleaned from doing the research for my novels.

In addition, now and again I will provide some of my fiction to read, for free, on this newsletter. Everything is available to anyone who subscribes, but I am always pleased when someone shows their appreciation for the newsletter by upgrading to paid.

Daily Diary, Day 1550:

Having gotten the proofed copy of the manuscript the night before, I worked very steadily all day yesterday and got all but the last chapter changes done, which I did this morning. Most of the errors were commas and hyphens (where they needed to be, and where I needed to remove them.) I know the rules for commas, but don’t always follow them, but I clearly don’t understand the hyphen rules at all (and the fact that all these errors slipped by the numerous beta readers, even the ones who are better than I am with grammar, reinforces my decision to always pay a professional proof-reader for my books.

I have transferred the document into Vellum, a software program that will permit me to format for a variety of ebook and print options, and today I will go through and do things like add back matter, proof the vellum version, and if this goes swiftly enough, I might even be able to publish an ebook version in Amazon by this evening.

However, for now have a zoom call scheduled.

Here is a super photo my husband took of last night’s sunset. Simply glorious!

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