The Final Omen: Second Sight Book Four was the one for me—the book that would have me banging my head against the walls and questioning why I ever decided to print my stories for the world to see. Every possible book related catastrophe has plagued me since I began writing the novel and I hope to share some of my insight to prevent the same fate from befalling other writers.
I’ve got a MacBook now, it’s all good…
After my Windows computer went wonky on me and contracted some sort of zombie virus, I decided to save up my pennies and upgrade to a MacBook. The Apple brand gave me a fall sense of security, as if nothing ever bad could happen to my livelihood if I used a MacBook. So very freaking wrong! One hard drive crash later, I was left scrambling to try and find a data recovery firm who could get my precious novel off of the MacBook. When it didn’t work, I was forced to work off of a partial copy I had emailed myself a month earlier. This disaster led me to discover the wonders of Dropbox: an online document storage system that every writer should have installed on their computer.
My editor is the shizzel, I can’t wait to hear her thoughts on my final book…
A month past my expected publication date, I had finally managed to recreate The Final Omen as best to my ability as I could. I was all set to send my manuscript to my editor when all of a sudden her email address isn’t working. I go to her Elance page and it’s gone. No!!!! Since we only communicated via email, I had no way to track her down. This meant I had to start over with a completely new editor who hadn’t read or worked on the three previous books in the series. My point is that don’t assume anything. In hindsight, I should’ve worked out the editing details way in advance.
I can do it all on my own! I don’t need any help!
I bit off way more than I could chew with The Final Omen. I lost a month’s worth of work and tried to cut corners to get the book out on time. It was a bad call on my part and I finally had to take a step back and ask for help. Since my original cover art was lost on my computer, I tried to redo the cover using a small file I saved online. It was frustrating and time-consuming and I finally scraped it altogether and hired a cover artist. The end result? A cover that I love! I’m not a graphic artist or a formatter and I learned that although doing these things myself could save a few bucks, it’s not worth the headache.
When you’re a writer, it’s a constant learning experience. As crazed as I may have been because of these issues, I’m sort of glad they happened. It’ll make the process of publishing my next novel much easier.
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