One of the joys of having a nice publisher

As I write this, FedEx is carrying my edited galley pages of Slanted Jack to the typesetter. The galleys are standard letter-size paper on which the typesetter has printed the book as it will actually appear. The galleys represent the first time I get to see the book as a reader will. (The advance reading copy (ARC) has yet to receive my or the copyeditor's corrections and so may look like a final book but very much is not.) When you work on galleys, you find all sorts of little details that slipped by previous passes--or, at least, I do. I spend hours and hours poring over the book, and I make on the order of a hundred changes in the process. Other writers may well be better at handling those edits earlier, but I greatly value this pass.

Once the typesetter receives the galleys, she will turn them quickly and send the resulting final version of the book to the printer. All of this is SOP for novels.

What isn't standard is the fact that the book was due to the printer today.

I received the galleys a little over a month ago. I had the usual two weeks to turn them around and send them back. For various reasons mostly having to do with too much being on my plate, I did not meet the deadline. I hate that I failed to do so, but I did.

What made the edits possible were the efforts and flexibility of several people in the Baen production process:

* Toni Weisskopf, the Publisher, who said it was okay to try to get a day or two out of the printer

* Danielle Turner, the Managing Editor, who actually got me that time

* Joy Freeman, who agreed to incorporate my changes in a rush

I didn't even have to rush the package to FedEx; Jennie was nice enough to do that for me.

I thank all of these folks for buying me the time to make Slanted Jack a little bit better book. I greatly appreciate it.