those noisy boys just might have spoken up too soon

Deadline is dead.

Actually, as I said, I received the copy edits package on Tuesday evening. I went through the entire thing and sent back a five-page corrections letter on Thursday.

Yeah. That's how I roll.

It helps when the following three things mesh:

1. You write fairly clean copy. Okay. I'll admit it. I am pretty good.

2. You have a really smart editor.

3. You have a brilliant copy editor.

Then things can be really easy. Not that I didn't have five pages of questions, comments, and explanations. But, again, to quote my son: Deadlines are my bitch.

And now Stick will be evolving (which, I understand is against the law in some parts of the country) directly into an ARC.

I can't wait to see it.

And I can't wait to see the cover art.

You guys in New York have a lot to live up to after the cover you did for The Marbury Lens.

And, speaking of that, I received what has to be in my all-time-top-five emails yesterday from a young guy in Pennsylvania who told me about how he was bored and started looking on the internet for a new book to read:

I begin my search for some good reads on Barnes and Noble's website and start by looking through some new releases and nothing seems to really jump out at me. I am also very picky when it comes to what I read (I'll come back to that). And then as I'm about to give up on my search an interesting cover catches my eye (you can see where this is leading...I hope..) and next to it reads "The Marbury Lens". I clicked to read the description and I thought,"Ok, this looks pretty interesting, maybe I'll give it a try...".

The next day I take a trip to the actual bookstore location nearby and picked it up. When I got home I sat down and began reading. And there went the rest of my week. I couldn't put the damn thing down.

Anyway, I won't quote the whole email here, but it definitely made my day, which probably wasn't hard to do considering the incredibly shitty mood I was in.

And, as I said, too, I began listening to the audio version of The Marbury Lens yesterday.

Mental tennis match:

Did I write this?

Damn. I wrote this.

Okay, it does really creep me out to hear someone read something I wrote. It's like listening to myself sing on a tape recording or something equally terrifying.

But this is really good, and I find myself unable to stop listening to it.

Mark Boyett does an amazing job with the voices and attitude. Perfect. I didn't think anyone could "get it" in terms of the voice/tempo/attitude changes, but Mark nailed it.

And his voice of Freddie is deeply disturbing.

I'm going to be wasting a lot of gas this weekend just so I can keep listening to the discs in my car.

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