Oops!

What? Is this my day?
Uh, uh, think fast! Need subject!

All right. I have a first draft, the story is done.
Now what?

For me, it’s time to bring in the beta readers.


Now, what works for me would probably horrify a sensibly paranoid writer—I put it up as a Google Doc and post the URL on the site where my freelance first readers get to see the sausage being made.

Yes, pretty much in public. Not advertised, but, well, new people do find it all the time.

So, there’s the Google Doc and, just from my perspective, mind you, it looks a lot like they have a race to see who can find the most abused punctuation, amusing homonyms (Bridle shower? What sort of marriage is this going to be? Sounds a bit kinky!) and so forth.


I ignore it for a few days, so they can find every single misplaced comma. Then I have a mammoth correction session on my master copy, add things I thought of while making the corrections, reword that sentence someone thought didn’t make any sense and so forth.

Repost it for a second look, while I start formatting and covers.


Covers. Oh dear. Sometimes they are easy, sometimes not. Today is a not. Definitely not that picture above.

Nor this one.

MidJourney isn’t doing well at magic duels. I shall have to hit Pixabay (https://pixabay.com/) and Dreamstime (https://www.dreamstime.com/) and do this one that way.

Then formatting.


I don’t do fancy formatting, and do most of it as I write, so it’s mostly a matter of the title page, legal page, Table of Contents, at the front and all the back matter—a sample of an up coming book, and the links to everything else I’ve ever written.

A lot of the Mad Genii publish paper versions as well. As my paper copies sales are in the single digits, I usually don’t.

Then there’s that last read through. It’s bloody amazing how many more typos the Beta readers have found, that escaped their first go through. And then I frequently find a few, and especially missing dialog tags. After sitting for week, if I am not sure who’s talking, it needs to be clear.


And then, after telling myself that there is no perfect, I push the button.

Oh. Marketing. I was supposed to do something, wasn’t I?

There’s a reason I’m not one of those rich writers . . .

12 thoughts on “Oops!”

  1. I’ve heard it said that conductors make great wizard pictures. Maybe if you ask Midj for choral conductors (so no/fewer wands/batons, if it’s that advanced) you can get a couple to paste together for wildly gesticulating magicians?

    P.S. LJ still hates me. I have a question about KAT versus Aslanov versus Home World on pruning timelines, or more specifically Karl’s family pruning doesn’t seem like it could have resulted from Home World events, but Aslanov says it’s been a century-plus . . . Karl makes it seem like old history from his very young perspective, so we have another pruning in the next couple years from Aslsnov time?

    1. Aslanov is twenty years before KAT.

      The Traeger family issue, might have involved prison, but no executions so it wasn’t considered a big deal. The perp–and all of his decendants’ removal from the line of inheritance left a lot of men still in line, but mostly elderly without sons, so a decade or two later, all those old men dying, left the family a bit thin on the ground.

  2. I do my damn best to kill every single typo, and not just in the ebook edition but also the ebook bundles and the print editions. Even so… every so often I reread one of my books (single or in bundle form) and there’s typically one quiet typo still alive to be eradicated. Even after several years.

    I swear they breed…

  3. Typos are a cunning breed of beast. They move in waves, and although you catch most of them, a few of the hardiest slip through, immune to beta readers, roof-preaders, and “I changed the font and found a dozen more” checks. They burrow deep into the dead spaces of the pages, lurking, waiting for the signal, the final summons to life.

    “PUBLISH!”

    And they attack!

    1. I stick a “copyright Pamela Uphoff 2023” on it on general principles but I’m both ultra trusting and have never had problem with it. Some authors are also dubious about the Google doc’s terms of service.

      I’m way behind, on registering the copyrights for the final versions, which will, eventually, turn out to have not been a good idea. That’s something I really need to get on top of.

      2. Aaand now I have a mental image of Rich the Mongoose going stiff and Mike sighting down him for a magical attack. As Rich giggles. Arrrrrgh!

Comments are closed.

Up ↑

%d bloggers like this: