Monday, February 13, 2017

Congratulations to me!


WOO HOO! The last I has been dotted and the final T has been crossed in book four (formerly three). That's not to say there might not be editorial-related changes later, after the editor has a look at it, but I'm finally pleased with the story I wanted to tell.

(Image courtesy of Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_end_of_Wikipedia)


I was tempted to not finish my last read-through, but I'm so glad I did. I fleshed a few things out and fixed some things at the end I hadn't realized weren't up to snuff. At the end of the day, I also added about 800 words. It's my longest book to date and I'm not even sure how that happened.

Now it's "resting." I'm taking a break from it for two weeks to get some distance and then I'll do another read-through before scheduling a date with my content/copy editor.

In the meantime, book five is now on my plate. It's written, but needs revisions. Maybe not as many as I thought, based on what I read yesterday. We'll see how it goes. I do have two other projects, one (very) short story and book six to write.

In my quest to start up this little publishing company of mine, a new but oh-so-important aspect of being a business owner has come up in my reading/research--bookkeeping. Yep. This endeavor isn't going to have to cover set costs yet (office space, electricity, Internet, etc.), but I do want it to eventually pay for the book covers and editing, as well as the things I stipulated in my business plan.

Anyway, I researched bookkeeping for small business and found some easy-to-fill out Excel spreadsheet templates. Income and outgo are going to be minimal for a while, income=owner investment, outgo=book cover and editing expenses, and they won't happen on a predictable schedule either, so I think even a plain old ledger would serve me fine. But I found a spreadsheet template with a whole bunch of formulas already built in. All I have to do is key amounts into the appropriate cells and the spreadsheet will do all the hard work. YAY!

A dear friend reminded me that sometimes we need a break from all the noise in our head. Something not writing- and not business-related. We need to feed our souls as well as our muses. So I celebrated finishing the book on Saturday with a lot of hockey watching and some cross stitching. And it was lovely. Almost done with my sampler and the Dallas Stars won--YAY. The Pittsburgh Penguins and the Columbus Blue Jackets lost--HUH?? (None of these teams played each other.)

Hope you had as lovely a weekend as I did. :0)

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