Page Goofs (and Texas Gothic teaser!)

Today I am finishing up my pass on the page proofs of Texas Gothic. What this means is that I get one last look at the book as it’s going to appear when you get it in your eager hands. This is to catch any mistakes that have crept in as the book was formatted–when it goes from a manuscript to a book. I am not supposed to tinker with anything at this point, just check for mistakes.

This is so hard for me!!

I am a tinkerer, a tweaker, a fixer… There is no sentence so perfect that it cannot be made just a little bit more so. (This is why blogging is such a potential time-suck for me. And why you’ll find typos on this blog. The choice is have a blog post with typos, or have no blog post because I spend all day trying to make it perfect.)

Anyway, today I’m reading through the last 100 pages of Texas Gothic, and it’s always a bittersweet thing. Not just because I can’t tinker with stuff, but because this is really the last I’ll work on this book. It’s probably the last time I’ll read it all the way through. But I’ve come to love these characters, and their story. Even if I write more about Amy Goodnight or her family, she’ll never be at this particular juncture again.

On the other hand, this just means we’re that much closer to YOU getting to read the book! Yay!

In the meantime, here’s a little snippet from the pages of Texas Gothic I’m going over this morning:

I felt around for my flashlight, promising myself that when I got out of this–however I got out of this–I would indulge in an almighty freak out about the the fact that I was covered in bat crap. But for now I’d be thankful it had broken my fall.

Turning on the light helped. Knowing your situation, even when it sucked, was better than not. I was in a cave of reasonable size. One section seemed to go deeper into the ground, though I couldn’t tell how far because stalactites–or stalagmites, I could never remember which–blocked my view. I was not at all inclined to investigate, because that would mean crawling on my belly into places where neurotic control freaks were never meant to go.

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