Woohoo! Dragonforge is GO! and, an upcoming event!

So, I turned in Dragonforge on Wednesday night/Thursday morning. Friday afternoon I get a call from my editor at Solaris--he's already read the entire manuscript. So, I asked him if he gave it a thumbs up or a thumbs down. There was a long moment of silence. Then I realized my cell phone battery had died. I felt like I was trapped in a TV commercial....

Anyway, we finally managed to talk once I got back to my car and had the charger plugged in, and he went down a list of requested changes, with most of them being really simple stuff. I have a character mention a name that he logically couldn't know a chapter before he officially learns the name. There was some dialogue that was unitentially jarring in the context it was said in. And, there were a few plot elements that were left dangling. One was an intentional dangle, a mystery to be left over into the next book, but didn't require resolution to tie up the major plotlines of this book. I added a bit of dialogue near the end to acknowledge that the characters hadn't just forgotten it and gave a hint at what they might be pursuing next. Then, there was a a plotline that was tied up, but with a plot device left dangling. I had a character buy a gift for another character early in the book, then, due to the sweep of events, he never gets to give her the gift. The editor (and one of my wise-readers) wanted to know what happened to the ungiven gift? So, I had to figure out a plausible path for the character to get his hands back on the gift in his final scene so he could give it to her. It was a good catch; the old scene neatly tied up the plot thread, but the new one has more emotional oomph, I think. Now... I'm done!

Except, not really of course. I still have line edits to wade through, then galleys to proof, etc. etc. But, at this point, we're talking about changing words here and there. The events of the storyline are now locked in. The novel creation is done.

I spent much of the weekend reading "The Fifth Elephant" by Terry Pratchett. It's so odd to know that he must have spent months on it, like I spent months on Dragonforge, and I can come along and finish it two days.

I go back to my day job tomorrow after two weeks off. I feel guilty that I didn't get more done with all the time off. I have three or four short stories I have circulated in ages, good stories that would probably find homes if I would just print them out and mail them to someone. And, I had intended to post a lot more to my blogs in this time. Ah well.

One thing I've been meaning to post is that I have a event this week at the Barnes and Noble at the Streets at Southpoint in Durham, NC this Thursday, 7pm. It's a shared discussion on writing SF with some other local authors, including Lisa Shearin, Warren Rochelle, and Debra Killeen. If you're in the area, come on by.

Now, it's nearly midnight. I've spent the last two weeks without using my alarm clock. It's going to be a rough awaking tomorrow, I fear....