Weekend Update

I've been pretty much off the grid all weekend long working with the first galley of my novel, Conquering Venus. It's an "e-galley," where we comb through looking for formatting issues and the first round of corrections. A bound uncorrected galley comes next, which will be sent to blurbers and then an advanced reader copy will follow that to send to reviewers.  I'm looking at every word and line in this e-galley. I spent about six hours on it Saturday and five yesterday. The book is right at 300 pages and I finally stopped last night at page 178. Thankfully, 90 percent of the issues in this first galley are formatting (paragraph indents, italics, accent marks, etc.). Tonight, I'm back to fine-tooth-combing it. 

I was really in a proofing groove yesterday afternoon when my phone rang. I had totally forgotten the Atlanta Queer Literary Festival committee meeting. I begged off, but many thanks to Megan, Franklin, Dustin, et al for picking up my slack. I almost forgot that I was supposed to meet fellow poet and blogger Emily Benton for a quick dinner at Manuel's Tavern. She was in town with her boyfriend Scott for the Antony and the Johnson's concert, which I almost bought a ticket for, but then decided I'd better get back to editing. It was great to see both of them and chat about blogging, poetry, the egos of poets and other assorted po'biz.

Back to work!