I am the author of several YA novels including Adaptation, a sci-fi thriller. The sequel, Inheritance, will be published Sept. 24, 2013! I'm also the co-founder with Cindy Pon of Diversity in YA.
Ta-da! That’s the cover and title for the sequel to Adaptation, on shelves September 18, 2013!
For more cover reveal fun, go here to read the cover copy (the book description), but SPOILER WARNING: There are spoilers for Adaptation in the copy so if you haven’t read Adaptation, I suggest you not read the copy for Inheritance! Otherwise, cover copy is here.
First Pass Page Proofs Day 5: And…I’m finished. Wow. I’m both relieved to be finished with this novel and freaking scared. This is it for this book. Barring additional queries from the proofreaders (which is possible), I won’t be changing anything else in this novel. As always, finishing page proofs is bittersweet for me.
But that means it’s one step closer to being in your hands. Soooon, patient readers! Soon.
First Pass Page Proofs Day 4: I’m in the home stretch now! Today I’ve been noticing how often people smile and breathe in this book. Way too much! So I’ve been going through and judiciously pruning the smiling and breathing. Which I now find kind of hilarious because right behind me in my office is a book by Thich Nhat Hanh called Peace Is Every Step, in which the Buddhist monk advocates smiling and breathing as part of mindfulness. Here’s a representative quote from the book:
“Breathing and smiling together—that is peace education. If we know how to appreciate these beautiful things, we will not have to search for anything else. Peace is available in every moment, in every breath, in every step.”
It’s a good reminder to me to not be so harsh on myself when I encounter smiling and breathing in my characters. They’re looking for peace too. :)
First Pass Page Proofs Day 3: I continue to swing between “I LOVE THIS SO MUCH” and “this is the most boring thing ever written in the history of all writing.” And yet, I think if I were given the opportunity to keep editing/revising this book in the future, I would! Because I am still finding phrases that don’t need to be there, words that I use way too much, and all sorts of tiny things that probably will annoy no one but me. So it’s good that my publisher doesn’t really let me do anything to the book after this phase. (Does that sound like I’m trying to convince myself?)
First Pass Page Proofs, Day 2: Remember how I said yesterday that by the time I get to page proofs, I’m totally tired of re-reading my book? Well, this isn’t the end of proofing, but luckily I don’t have to do much more after this. The publisher does additional rounds of proofing (I don’t really know how many), and sometimes I do get a few queries from the proofreader. I remember that once I got a query in a late round of page proofing that horrified me because I had forgotten where I put an item in one chapter, and it turned up somewhere else several chapters later. Last year, with Adaptation, I re-used one phrase about four times within three pages, and it was an unusual phrase. That got cut during a late round of proofing.
But thank goodness I only have to re-read the whole thing this one last time! I still like reading Julian’s sections the best. But I’m getting to my favorite part of the book tomorrow. To be continued…
(Photo above is one page in the sequel.)
First Pass Page Proofs, Day 1: I’m now entering the very last stages of production before the sequel to Adaptation will be published! This is a photo of the first pass page proofs for the sequel. I love this page. :)
The first pass page proofs are the first time the text of the novel has been set into print book format, so this is the first time I get to see my manuscript looking like the pages of a book. It’s always, always a thrill! The sequel to Adaptation clocks in at 472 typeset pages, which will make it sort of a hefty hardcover. For the next few days, I’ll be reading the page proofs out loud because by this time in the process, I’ve read the book so many times that I get totally bored unless I force myself to read it out loud. While I read it, I’m checking for typos, repeated words, clunky sentences that could be fixed, and last but not least, any remaining plot holes. I make corrections directly onto my copy of the paper proofs in pencil, and then when I’m finished, I’ll hand-copy all those corrections onto the copy of the paper proofs that I will send back to my publisher.
Page proofs can be kind of annoying because, as I said, I’ve read the book so many times by this stage I’m tired of it. And sometimes I can’t tell if the book is any good at all. But then sometimes I get to scenes that I totally love, and all I can do is hope that the scenes that bored me won’t bore real readers! I’m also discovering that I absolutely love reading the dialogue out loud, especially if it involves Julian. He is so dramatic! And yes, I totally act out the lines. I mean, how else would you tell if they sound right? ;)
Copyedits Day 7: I learned today that as much as I’d like to call a female soldier “sir,” (1) that’s only done in Hollywood, not in the actual military; and (2) it’s probably too queer for the situation in question. (I know, it’s hard to believe anything could be “too queer”! But in this situation, sadly I think so.)
But it still gives me an excuse to post this picture of Starbuck!
