Crawling Toward The Finish Line

And I do mean crawling! It’s been over a year since Book 1, Fool Me Once, was contracted by The Wild Rose Press in New York. This is an excerpt from the email I received yesterday from my editor: “I have the proof back for Fool Me Once. There isn’t anything you need to do. The mark-ups are a comma here and there and few quotation marks that got turned backward after an en dash. Are you okay with me sending it on to Final Galley?”

It takes less time for an elephant to give birth and it’s frustrating to wait all this time when I could have self-published in a fraction of the time but…the manuscript has had three rounds of expert editing, and a final “line edit” which is where the manuscript is read backwards to look for errors while not getting involved in the story. While it was in Preliminary Galley, the blurb, which I wrote for the back cover, was  thoroughly massaged by the “Blurb Committee” as they have the experience to know how to sell a book, hooking the reader without giving away the plot…in about 250 words!

The only thing left is the cover. A cover artist was credited so, clearly, one has been selected. When I filled out the data sheet for the cover artist, I emailed pictures of the setting, the horses and the riders’ clothes…hat, helmet, jeans, jackets, chaps, spurs, gloves (everything but their underwear, no joke) so I’m looking forward to seeing what she did with the raw materials.

If all goes well, look for us at the upcoming Equine Expo at nearby True West Horse Campground in July, ready to promote horse books for horse lovers.