Happy Birthday To Me

Well, today (the 9th…it’s still the 9th here on the east coast of the USA) is my birthday.  As a special birthday present to myself….I really and truly finished Masters.  For real this time.

I got the last of the changes to the middle chapters done this afternoon (at work, to be honest, but it was after all the real work related stuff for the week was done, so I don’t feel bad about that).  Final word count: 74,679 words or about 280 pages.  Sweet!

I shipped off my altered chapters to the editor this afternoon as well.  So hopefully I’ll get them back from her sometime in the next couple days.  Then it’s just a couple hours to fix whatever last error she found, then off to the presses!  Pretty exciting.  🙂

Of course, now I’m in a quandary.  Masters is now JUST below my self-imposed cutoff between my pricing tiers.  To be strict about it or not to be.  That is the question.

Oh well, whatever.  That’s something to worry about later.  For now, it feels good to be well and truly done.  I have to say, I’ve been paying a lot of attention to Dean Wesley Smith and the others in his camp who quote Heinlein’s five rules of business.  I’ve been trying to emulate them and follow those rules.  But all the same, the changes I made to Masters over the last week or so have definitely improved the story, given it a bit more depth.  And saved it from a really crappy ending.  So yeah, I guess I did rewrite a little bit on this one.  But just a little.  Actually, I really only added stuff in.  Stuff that I wanted to put in when I was first writing it, but I got impatient and rushed the last few chapters that I had remaining to do.  So I guess this wasn’t really rewriting so much as finally putting in everything I really wanted to.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.

So anyway, keep an eye out on the various ebook stores over the next week or so.  You should see Masters up there soon, with the trade paperback edition coming out shortly thereafter.  As soon as I figure out how to format the thing or hire someone to do it for me..

Right.  That’s it for now.  Cheers!