Amazon!

It's listed on Amazon.com now:

The Pacific Between

Run....

Print run, that is.

Gasp! The book is ready to go to print run. This is it. I can't believe it. The Pacific Between is going to be printed (and available for pre-ordering) for real. Wow. I guess all the hard work in the past few years really is paying off, and this is just the beginning. It's like I've been rehearsing for the big opening number for all these years, and finally, the lights are on, and the stage is set...

I am getting tremendous opening night jitters. Cripes.

Then I saw the listing on Amazon.com. Suddenly it feels real. My debut. Is. Almost. Ready.

Thank you! All of you who have helped make this happen.

There's still a few months to go before general release. But, please take a look, and pre-order if you want! I'm sure my publisher would be happy to know that there is interest out there for the book.

Done

I'm done proofing the galley. Hopefully this will be the last time I need to do anything with it.

Moving along...

I'm about halfway into proofing the galley. So far I've found another five or six minor or not so minor errors. Yikes! When will this stop. I have a feeling that the will still be errors once the books are in print and on the shelves, but honestly, my eyes are bleeding and I'm doing the best I can. So, dear readers, if you see a typo when you read the book, give me a @#$^ break.

I'm also finishing with some publicity material. I also sent in a design for bookmarks. I think it looks darn good.

Galley!!!

Finally, my galley copy arrived in the mail.

It looks gorgeous. I'm very happy with the quality. Like a parent talking about his own baby, I must say the book is very handsome. Granted, I would have preferred a matte cover, but I also understand the pros and cons. A matte finish just isn't practical.

But alas! Flipping through a few pages yielded a few more errors. How frustrating. It's like, no matter how hard you look, some things are going to slip through anyway. These are not big niggles: a wrong punctuation here, a typo there; still, they're annoying.

This will be my last chance to catch any errors before it goes to print -- it will be FINAL.

So, I think I'm going to use a new approach. I'm going to pick a random chapter, or start from the last chapter and work my way up. That way, I may be able to trick my mind to not gloss over any glaring problems by being distracted by the story itself. It's kind of like how you read the words backward, starting from the last word of the paragraph -- that way, you have a better chance of catching any spelling errors. Well, we'll see how this technique works this time.

Anyway, I'm very happy that the galleys are out. That means they can now be sent to the reviewers.

I've also decided to enter into the Barnes&Noble's Discovering New Author program. We'll see how that goes.

Ray