Things may have appeared static since the last post but, like watching a burrowing badger, none of the effort shows on the surface…
Feedback
Feedback is now coming in from final-stage gamma readers—the news is good; two have already said they’ve had to go back and re-read chapters for mistakes because they were gripped.
When they did re-enter crit mode, the worst they found (so far) were typos and a couple of basic continuity issues that were easily fixed. There is still a significant amount of feedback to come, but if it keeps errors in the released book to a minimum it’s worth the wait.
Cover
After six concepts and over twenty rough drafts, the cover design has been finalised. I received some immensely helpful pointers from Colin Barnes, a friend of mine who is trained in graphic design and has been releasing his thriller/SF books with custom covers for several years. Thanks are also owed to the Elite: Dangerous community’s very own Mobius, who contributed other useful design ideas.
The design is going to remain under wraps until it receives official approval from Frontier (hopefully, later this week). I could fall back on one of the others, but the current favourite combines a classic SF look with plenty of Elite influences. As requested by the community in the poll, it’s also completely different from any of the other Elite: Dangerous books released so far.
Formatting and Final Read Through
Formatting the text has already started. I need to incorporate all the corrections from the gamma readers before I do a last run through the whole ebook. How long this stage will take, I don’t know. Editing the HTML has been the only way to fix some problems in the past…
Holiday
While I await Frontier’s decision and more feedback, it’s family holiday time in just a few days. There’ll be some work done on corrections, but things will really spin back up to speed later in August…
Until then, have a good summer, one and all.