Labor of Love.

(Somewhat cross-posted from my LiveJournal.)

I finished the first draft of EDEN on August 28th. I began working on this story back in 2002 (outlines and such), but didn't officially start writing until 2004 (for the National Novel Writing Month).

Here's the breakdown:
3 Parts
91 Chapters
221,820 Words
Rated R for all of the blood 'n guts fun! :D

In MS Word, with Palatino Linotype at 12 pt, the page count is 576. In my current InDesign template for the book, the page count stands at 695. @_@ I have some serious tinkering to do with fonts, spacing, leading, and all that jazz. I expect the page count to change (hopefully drop). I'm going with Minion Pro for my body text, and I spent a good chunk of time designing my own ellipse. I was hoping to find a better/easier way to do that. Yeah, those ellipses I see in other books are nothing like the standard one I see in Word. And Justified and line breaks don't like *period*space*period**space*period*. But I now have a nice, well-spaced ellipse, fashioned after the Minion Pro font.

So the madness of editing has now begun. I've learned in the past that I can't be too over-critical of my work. I need to read it as though I didn't write it. If not, I'll be pulling my hair out by Chapter 4. September has become DeEdMo (Devin's Editing Month). Hehehe, deedmo. I have the book broken down and printed out in three binders. I'm hoping that things will go smoothly. I would LOVE to have a beta reader, but I don't want to bother anyone with a book they won't like. *sigh*

Everyone around me has been trying to talk me into making this book three books, instead of one book with three parts. I try to tell them why it can't be broken up like that. But their usual response is, "Tolkien wanted his Lord of the Rings trilogy to be one book, but was talked out of it by his publisher." It's true that I planned for EDEN to two books, but this all changed while I was writing. These three parts, in my eyes, aren't enough to stand alone as individual books. Or I can turn this around an look at it differently; buy one book, get two free, and all are neatly bound for your convenience!

When I finally publish this one, instead of having a two chapter excerpt, I plan to post the first part. That's 34 chapters for free! However, if you want to read more... >:)

I've spent too much time writing this rambling mess. Time to go do something productive.

*poof*