Cast in Silence Cover, attempt one
Mar. 26th, 2009 11:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
msagaraI have been so absent lately I can almost hear crickets, and I've been dusting cobwebs off my hands and feet while I try to make a bit of space in the Michelle-clutter.
I finally have a scan of the actual cover flat for Cast in Silence which is an August 2009 release. I really like it.
It's in theory behind the cut:
The surface itself is a matte; the words are gloss. The overall cover is darker than it appears (on my computer), but the central image is blue and gold, and while the colours are darker, they're richer than they appear here (again, on my computer).
The book is finished.
Sadly, House Name is not finished. A small author-is-not-very-clever misunderstanding about the conversion of MS Word wordcounts to page run-off counts means that the book I thought was a bit on the long side, while unfinished, was, ummm, very very very much on the long side. I haven't taken much of a break from writing; I just haven't reached the magical "the end" words. This reminds me a bit of writing the planned two volumes which comprised The Sun Sword. Which, of course, is six volumes.
So... I'm still working on that. I have also started the tentatively titled Cast in Chaos, which is the first of the three new Cast novels I just sold Luna. It is the book I affectionately refer to as the Refugee Book. This won't hopefully be as dark--to me--as Silence.
*edited because a good friend pointed out that 'mat' and 'matte' are not the same word.
I finally have a scan of the actual cover flat for Cast in Silence which is an August 2009 release. I really like it.
It's in theory behind the cut:
The surface itself is a matte; the words are gloss. The overall cover is darker than it appears (on my computer), but the central image is blue and gold, and while the colours are darker, they're richer than they appear here (again, on my computer).
The book is finished.
Sadly, House Name is not finished. A small author-is-not-very-clever misunderstanding about the conversion of MS Word wordcounts to page run-off counts means that the book I thought was a bit on the long side, while unfinished, was, ummm, very very very much on the long side. I haven't taken much of a break from writing; I just haven't reached the magical "the end" words. This reminds me a bit of writing the planned two volumes which comprised The Sun Sword. Which, of course, is six volumes.
So... I'm still working on that. I have also started the tentatively titled Cast in Chaos, which is the first of the three new Cast novels I just sold Luna. It is the book I affectionately refer to as the Refugee Book. This won't hopefully be as dark--to me--as Silence.
*edited because a good friend pointed out that 'mat' and 'matte' are not the same word.
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-27 01:25 pm (UTC)Never follow MS Word wordcounts. They count literal words, but that doesn't map onto book length. Two authors may have the same wordcount, but if one uses a lot of dialogue and the other uses mostly long paragraphs, the dialogue-y book will be longer in print.
One of the reasons for SMF (12pt courier, 1 inch margins all around) is that it's much easier to get a useful estimate of book length. A page in SMF counts as 250 words, regardless of whether it's a string of one-word dialogue exchanges or a solid wall of descriptive text.
If you're one of those people who hates courier, 12pt Times with 1" margins all around counts as 350 words.
(Bona fides: I'm a former text design manager, now a production manager.)
no subject
Date: 2009-03-27 07:08 pm (UTC)One of the reasons for SMF (12pt courier, 1 inch margins all around) is that it's much easier to get a useful estimate of book length. A page in SMF counts as 250 words, regardless of whether it's a string of one-word dialogue exchanges or a solid wall of descriptive text.
Until the last two novels -- House Name and Cast in Silence , I wrote in word, in page view, in 12pt Courier, with 24pt line spacing. I wrote by page count, rather than word count, so this would be the first time I've had this problem; I didn't actually pay attention to MS Word's wordcount because, well, it wasn't relevant.
But I migrated to a program called Scrivner, for the Mac, for the last two books. There is no page view in Scrivner; it's one continuous block of text. So, in as much as I follow daily metrics, I had to use the wordcount there--which is, essentially, the MS Word style of wordcount.
And because I've never used it before, I thought for some reason that there would be fewer pages, when exporting to standard manuscript format. This was, as you've pointed out, Completely Wrong.
But Scrivner has a lot of organization features I really like, so with the next books I write, I'll know to start the "OMG this is going to be way too long" ulcers much earlier...
no subject
Date: 2009-03-28 11:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-28 06:54 pm (UTC)What it currently has is an export function which will export the parts of the manuscript you select into one .doc or .rtf file. I can check the page count that way (which is what I did, albeit by accident); it didn't occur to me to do that until I was submitting something.
I think the new version will have a page view feature, though.