New Site

So, I just realized that I’m still getting some traffic to this blog. Not much, but a bit, so I wanted to make sure that anyone who’s still visiting this site occasionally and wondering why I haven’t posted anything since April knows that I moved the site quite a while back. I probably should have posted that fact back when I did it, but I suppose I trusted too much that people would be using the top-level domain to find the site and not the long, convoluted WordPress URL. Guess not. So, anyway, the new site is still a WordPress blog, but on another server, and can be accessed at either www.inannagabriel.com or www.inanna-gabriel.com.  See you there!!

Almost…

So, I’m almost done with the novel. The interior pages are all done, proof reading formatting and all. The only thing I’m missing is an author photograph that I may or may not include. So, I was all excited about this and updated the tagline on my IM with donedonedonedonedone! then realized…no, I’m not.

The interior pages are not the final step, as I’m my own editor and publisher as well. I knew the front cover wasn’t going to be ready until the weekend, as I’m going out to see Starwind on Saturday for her to take the photo for it. (She might be taking an author photo at the same time, and then we’ll see if I can manage a good enough shot for the book…) Anyway, that still left the back cover and spine for me to do. So, I popped into my graphics program and started on the design I had in mind, when it occurred to me–I still have to write a back-cover blurb for this thing!

I HATE writing blurbs.

But, I managed, and so this thing really is almost ready. Looks like it’ll definitely be ready in time for MarCon, and quite possibly even a bit sooner. Yay!!

That’s it for me–just seemed like something worth posting so I popped on.

Later!

~Inanna

Issue 3 – Ready to Go!

I was gone all day yesterday, and just got up today to discover that the proof copy of Title Goes Here: Issue three has arrived! All looks good, so that issue will be ready and available on time–yay! I it seems that my double-converting theory is correct as our twice-converted .pdf file is displaying all my fancy fonts and formatting. I think it’s time to start considering re-doing the file for Issue One.

Otherwise, I’m still working on finishing up the novel. I started my final proof-read the other day, knowing that I was going to have to go through it carefully because of all the changes I made on my last revision pass. Any time you’re doing a lot of deleting, adding, and moving, you wind up with orphaned words, repeat words, missing words etc., so I knew I’d have a lot of that to get rid of. But it’s proving a lot more involved than that. I didn’t start adding/changing until about chapter six of part three, but I’ve been doing MAJOR line edits and fixes from page one. A big thing is that one of the first steps I took when re-formatting the files as book pages was to change the sentence spacing. I was raised with it heavily enforced by my teachers to put two spaces after the end of a sentence, but that’s fallen out of common usage in the last few years. So, I’ve been removing that from my manuscripts when I format for publication. (Can’t do it in my day-to-day writing–it’s far too ingrained!)

Anyway… I went through the entire manuscript and did a find/replace on period-space-space to period-space. Then I repeated to shorten periods after question mark, exclamation point, and the end-quote mark when combined with a period, question mark, or exclamation point. Not the first time I’ve done this–I do it every issue for TGH (though thinking about that, the two-spaces method is an old typesetting technique, so it would probably make sense to leave it in…). This time, though, something went haywire in my find/replace. It somehow managed to replace period-quote-space-space with just a period-space, for one example, so now anywhere I have a quote ending in the middle of a paragraph, I’m having to add the quote mark back in. It also somehow threw in random question marks throughout the text, so that every now and then a sentence that is in no way a question suddenly ends in a question mark. When I first did the find/replace, I noticed shortly after that it had actually changed my name in the header from Inanna Gabriel to Inanna Gabri???.  So, I’ve had a lot to fix, between that crap and the normal line edit/proof reading stuff. It’s been going quickly, fortunately, but still a good deal more work than I expected of it.

So the proof-reading isn’t done, but well under control. Now I get to worry about the cover. I think I know what I want, but I’m a lousy photographer and don’t even own a camera other than the one in my phone, so it’s not something I can do alone. I believe Starwind is going to do my cover photography for me, but we need to find a time to do it, still. And I also need to convince her or someone to do a photo of me for the bio page. I don’t envy anyone having to take a picture of me while I whine about not being photogenic. But I should shut up if I hope to convince her!

So, that’s it for my overdue update. Issue Three of Title Goes Here: will be available April 13!

’til next time,

~Inanna Gabri???

Holy crap!

OK, so just yesterday I posted that I needed to email Chris Baty to ask permission to dedicate my book to him.  So, I was doing emails tonight, and sent one to him. I really expected, given how busy he is with NaNo WriMo, especially this month during Script Frenzy, that it would take ages just to get to him, but he answered me in less than two hours! He said he’d be honored, and even asked for an autographed copy!

Also, I offered a back-cover ad in Title Goes Here: to the host of my favorite Pagan podcast, who also happens to be an excellent artist. (The ad will be for his art business, not the podcast.) He offered to give us an ad on his podcast in exchange, which has something in the neighborhood  of 1,500 regular listeners, so a whole LOT of people are going to hear about our magazine!! Woo hoo!

So, all in all, a pretty good day to be me

Mission Accomplished!

Well, I succeeded! My goal for this week was to finish editing my novel so I’d be ready to start formatting it for publication, and I just reached the final page. Of course, I added about 6,500 words this week, so I’m still going to have to give the thing one more proof-read to make sure I didn’t screw anything up in the process.

So, what now? Next for this book is the above-referenced proof read, of course, plus formatting it and getting it ready to publish through Misanthrope Press. I also have to get the cover art together. I was also 100%, totally serious on my NaNo WriMo page when I said I was going to dedicate my first published novel to Chris Baty, so I should probably email him soon for permission, and hope it gets through the NaNo jungle in time for him to reply to me!

Meanwhile, I’m working on editing stories and doing page layout for Issue 3 of Title Goes Here: and working on a new short story of my own. Hoping to have draft one of that done by the end of this week just beginning. We’ll see how that goes…

The only other thing I can think of right now is my friend and fellow CMC officer J.M. Vogel finally got her own blog up and running this weekend. It’s only one post in, but promises to be a very interesting one to watch, as she’s basically chronicling her experiences as a new writer. I’ve added it to the links section–definitely check it out!

That’s it for me for now! Off to find something for dinner…

~Inanna

New Site!

Hello, and welcome to my new blog!

Anybody who was following my old site knows how very, very rarely it was getting updated of late!  So, I’ve decided to try this blogging thing, to see if maybe just entering in posts as opposed to having to update the whole site on a regular basis will keep me more on track.  Of course, now I have a whole new site to put together, so maybe not the best plan after all, but we’ll see, won’t we?

Anyway, with my first post comes some news: a new publication, my first of 2010!  My short story “Services Rendered” will appear in the Summer 2010 issue of Midnight in Hell.  This will be my third story at MIH.

Also, I’m spending this entire week doing (hopefully) final revisions on my novel, with planned publication this summer. I’m hoping to have copies available in time for Marcon in Columbus at the end of May.

OK, that’s enough new info for now… time to figure out how to get my old links & banners into this new page, then back to work on the book!

~Inanna