Hooray!

Nov. 14 is an auspicious day - I just finished, and uploade, a new book. It's called Harvardinates. You will see it exploding on social media, etc., tomorrow. You're hearing about it first, here.

My wife said, get me a proof copy, and I'll proofread, fast, I can do it really quickly. She can, though she doesn't like my style, and will give me a hard time about such things as commas. I will get her a book, but I won't hold my breath. Same with my brother. He's really one of my best careful third eyes. I value his advice.

But, the problem is this. You spend a few months on it, you do tedious research, you get all finished, toward the end there's a big rush of all-consuming days as you finished, and it's all like a dam. You have a thousand gallons of water waiting, dying to get through. On the other side it's dry - nothing produced in a long time. No reads. No sales. No nothing. You've been neglecting all that so you could finish writing. Well, the balance is too tipped. I can't wait another minute. I have to have it out there.

Now fortunately one can still change a book after one publishes it. I am counting on that. This time, I have this one pretty good, I think. I've got most of the proofing errors, although I know of two already in the paperback copy. They're small. If they were a problem I'd just change them on the spot. One of them you have to read all the way to the last page, and read the notes (which are actually a very interesting part of the book).

It's partly because I've gotten a little discouraged in proofreading my own books. I find it virtually impossible. So why not let my wife do it? Simply because I can't wait. And she won't want to do it, once she knows it's published. To her, that's the last step. You have to proof before you publish. If you don't it's like dealing with rotten fish.

One last reason is that I'm dealing with a truly ancient computer on the Word end of it. Here I have a pretty good one - on the blogs, on the graphics, on the promo - but when I write, it's ancient. It blanks out a lot. The space bar has become unreliable. I have to use incredible patience and grit to get through anything. In the end, if I have a misspelling or something, I don't want to go through the whole process of uploading, changing, etc. I'll let it wait until the last minute or just forget about it.

Ah but I'm done. If you buy the paperback, watch out for the sachem and the archaeologist. I misspelled them both. But it'll be fixed soon - as soon as I find a few more. It's only a matter of time.