inputting edits...

...gah, what a boring chore. Since my last post, I've done an out loud readthrough of the hard copy and a silent edit of same, and then the fun began. Ugh. Typing in the hard-copy tweaks and scribbles. What a deadly-dull task that is, but it must be done. So much easier to edit on-screen, but a print-out looks and reads differently. A font prints slightly differently than it displays, and minor punctuation glitches (comma instead of period, extra space between words) show up on the paper page that are sometimes difficult or impossible to see on the screen.

Anyway, that's finally done. Took forever and a half because I set it aside for a bit to tackle end-of-year bookkeeping for our various businesses. Fingers crossed incorporating last year ends up saving the significant money predicted by our accountant, 'cause sheesh it's been a lot of extra work. Not so horribly much now that it's all set up and systems are in place, but those only do so much good when I get caught up trying to meet a novel contest deadline and let the bookkeeping slide for a couple of months.

So here it is, March first already. Saturday afternoon we drive over to Waikoloa for the Left Coast Crime conference. Looking forward to that, but got a few things to cross of the "to do" list before then. Including finding somewhere/way to insert one more "Rose" incident in this draft (that will make sense when the book is published and you read it), and crafting some kind of elevator pitch: a two-sentence answer to the question, "What's your book about?" This is the kind of thing that brings me to my knees. I find it harder to write a pithy description than to write the entire book, which is why I've let the entire past month go by without sitting down to tackle it. If/when I get a good (or even barely acceptable) one put together I'll post it here.

In the meantime, I've got a few wardrobe issues to finish up: one and a half of the four (yes, that's 4) skirts I sewed last week still need to be hemmed. And there's one more casual top I might see if I can whip up before next weekend. That's all over at my sewing blog.