Dark Metropolis update!

It's been a while. Oh, how I meant to blog more often, but all I've had to talk about lately is my garden. And I'm aware that my garden would be very boring to anyone who isn't also learning to garden, because if you don't garden at all, you wouldn't care about my attempts, and if you're GOOD at gardening, well, you also wouldn't care about my attempts, because they are blundering and amateurish.

But whatever. I don't want to talk about the garden too much anyway. The thing I like about it is how it is a place where communication happens without words. Plants grow and thrive and die and get eaten by mean old ants and flower and set fruit, silent but alive. I love to just stare at them and marvel how things can change in a day.

However, I have also been hard at work and guess what? This book is actually happening! I mean, I knew it was, but a part of me never believes until we get to things like line edits and cover comps. And we're HERE! So here is the latest:

--The title has changed back to Dark Metropolis! I kinda like it because it matches so well with the cover comp.

--Which you CANNOT SEE, because it's just a comp. But, oh my, I love it. I love it SOOOO much. It somehow looks exactly like I imagined and also so much cooler than I imagined. I can't wait to show everyone the final version.

--And yes, I just finished line edits, paired with some minor-to-moderate bigger picture edits. This book has had the most intense edits I've ever done and it's occasionally been kind of an ego blow, but now that it's done I'm extremely impressed by the work that was done. The book is SOOOO much better. I am not as diehard over the absolute necessity of editors as some people in this self-pub vs. trad pub age, because I have read some unsold manuscripts every bit as good as most published books, but...oh boy. Editors can also work some serious magic. Although it certainly didn't feel much like magic at the time, more like hard work and a lot of "what am I doooing?" "why did I write that in the FIRST PLACE?" and "why can I not get this scene right, ever?"

I really hope all this means the book is my best work, but...I am never able to tell. At all.

I've found myself creeping back, step by step, into the internet world a bit. For a while there just wasn't much to talk about, because I moved and it felt terribly monumental and I've been like someone falling in love, only my romance is with the farmland and the Blue Ridge Mountains and Owinda (that's the name the original residents of my newly purchased home gave it, in the 19th century--I don't know why), and everyone knows falling in love is boring to everyone except the people involved. But I am also very close to having a real, new, book-shaped thing again.