Short Stories, Deadlines, & the Cold Steel FINAL Cover (Spiritwalker Monday 22)

This week’s Spiritwalker Monday post was supposed to be The Creole of Expedition Part Two (Part One from last week can be found here), in which I go into detail (and quote extensively from people who know more than I do) about how I “created” a creole specifically for the city of Expedition so the people who live there could have a regionally specific way of talking.

I haven’t had time to finish writing that post because of other deadlines.

1) I am still working my way through the page proofs of COLD STEEL.

Of course I am looking for typos and grammatical mistakes, of which so far I believe I have found only two in quite a long manuscript, which means the Editor, Associate Editor, copy editor, and Sr Production Director have all done an excellent job. There is one odd glitch (marked by the orange post-its) which has to be trimmed out throughout [number strings that got dropped into/left in from some previous cycle of production]. Given the paucity of actual typos, my focus has been making any last (minor) changes such as changing a word or rephrasing a conversation or (in one case) adding a small revelation to the end of a chapter. This massive project is due at the end of the week.

2) A final copy-edit read-through of my short story “My Voice Is In My Sword,” which was originally published in WEIRD TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE (edited by Katharine Kerr & Martin H. Greenberg, 1994) and is being reprinted (together with a new interview) in APEX MAGAZINE‘s February 2013 issue. It’s now done and turned in.

3) Edits on my short story (technically a novelette) for Jonathan Strahan’s FEARSOME JOURNEYS (Solaris/S&S Summer 2013), a collection of original epic fantasy short stories. Due at the end of this week also.

Because of these deadlines, I plan to finish and post the Creole Part Two post — next week.

For this week, have a jpeg of the final cover for COLD STEEL. Note the cut on her cheek.

ETA:

I’ve edited the image below out and asking you to go to the image here (Cold Steel Final Cover).

6 thoughts on “Short Stories, Deadlines, & the Cold Steel FINAL Cover (Spiritwalker Monday 22)

  1. I love those covers ! That’s even what made me buy cold magic… But I would have bough cold steel even with an ugly cover !

  2. It’s more of a pale sea green shading to silvery gray sea green on the actual cover.

  3. Thanks! But indeed, covers can make a huge difference in terms of people picking up a book they might otherwise not have noticed.

  4. These have all been stunning photos. I’m thrilled to see this book making its slow way to my hands. I’m also wondering if anybody calls page proofs “galleys” any more, since that’s what we always called them back in the last century.

  5. Stunning photos taken with my iPhone! Actually, I think this one of the book with all the post-its is my favorite.

    I do hear people call them galleys sometimes. I also wonder if there is technically a difference between page proofs and galleys. I should know this but I don’t.

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