WHAT I READ THIS WEEK:  The Sea Hawk by Rafael Sabatini.

http://amazon.com/author/gretchenrix

While my newest novel is out there in the beta readers’ hands I’m taking this time to proofread it from back to front. I should finish this task today. So far I’ve found an instance where it should have said “if” and it said “it,” a missing quotation mark and period, my misuse of two words (beveled and venal) that have now been corrected, and a couple more errors I’ve already forgotten about. I had already proofread it from front to back before I ever turned it loose. I don’t remember what mistakes I found originally.

Beta reader number one found at least three errors. I expect that beta reader number two will find some as well.  A very long time ago Western writer John S. McCord (The Baynes Clan series) told me (and a room full of other writers) that one of the most important editing processes a writer could do was to read your work out loud to yourself. I do that first thing and my cat hates me. Someone else gave the advice to read and proof your work from back to front, thereby cutting yourself off from the plot. If I was capable of doing it word by word backwards, I would. But I can’t. So far I’ve only been able to proof page by page. Paragraph by paragraph would be better, and it may come to that before I let THE COWBOY’S BABY GOES TO HEAVEN publish.

My most difficult problem with proofreading has been taming my impulse to copy edit as I read. There has to come a time when it’s good enough. Let it go. Otherwise you will switch words, rework sentences, change plot and anything else you can do to avoid finishing and you’ll succeed. The novel will never be complete. Proofreading is looking for spelling errors, typos, grammar mistakes, spacing errors and the such; by the time you get to proofreading you should have a finished product. Don’t fiddle with it anymore.

THE COWBOY’S BABY GOES TO HEAVEN will have the input of two more beta readers before it’s done. Then Streetlight Graphics and Glendon Haddix will do their magic and create a wonderful cover and clean formatting for it, and then off we go. I can’t wait to see this one in print (and e-print). I think it’s better than THE COWBOY’S BABY, and I’m still really proud of that one.

Photos by Roxanne Rix.

My books can be found at

http://amazon.com/author/gretchenrix

as well as at Barnes & Noble online for Nook readers and Smashwords for every other device. And at BookPeople in Austin, Texas, Logos and Buffalo Clover in Lockhart, Texas.

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK:  Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins.  Badwater by Toni Dwiggins.  Shroud for a Nightingale by P.D. James.

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK:  Journey Into Fear by Eric Ambler.  Haunted House by Jack Kilborn and J.A. Konrath.

Photos by Roxanne Rix. My books can be found at

http://amazon.com/author/gretchenrix

http://barnesandnoble.com/c/gretchen-rix

http://smashwords.com/books/view/105559

This morning at 6:00 I officially finished my new romantic comedy THE COWBOY’S BABY GOES TO HEAVEN. It’s done! The next step is getting it to my primary beta reader. She will either give me the green light, suggest changes, or tell me it sucks.

If it is the green light, then it goes to the secondary beta readers for suggestions and light proofreading and then back to me for heavy proofreading. Then I’ll turn it over to the great cover artist and e-book format professional Glendon Haddix of Streetlight Graphics and the book will be published before October.

If she suggests changes I will consider her advice and probably make changes. Then it will follow the same path as above, but probably be up to a month behind. And if she says it sucks? Well, I’ll feel really bad. Then I’ll let the manuscript sit for about six months and then go back and read it with more detachment. From there I’ll either revise (if her comments had merit) or send it to the secondary beta readers.

I started THE COWBOY’S BABY GOES TO HEAVEN on April 16, 2012. I was supposed to finish it that year. When I broke my shoulder in October I couldn’t type very well, so all my plans to write three or four books that year went down the drain.  When I recovered in 2013 I tried writing two novels at once, HEAVEN and TEA WITH A DEAD GAL, one of them during the week and the other on weekends. Eventually I put DEAD GAL aside and concentrated on finishing HEAVEN. 2013 looks like it might be a one book year as well, though I have a fighting chance of getting DEAD GAL done before then.

I’ve already got plans for next year. One, a short story collection that ties the DEAD mystery characters (especially the Boo Radley dog) in with THE COWBOY’S BABY characters (especially Baby himself). Two, a shorter romance novel called THE SAFARI BRIDE that will be a departure from the light romance I’ve done so far. And then three, I’m going to see if I can salvage a story I started long, long ago that meant quite a bit to me at the time. That will be quite an interesting project.

But for now I am done! I think this one’s even better than THE COWBOY’S BABY.

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK:   Joyland by Stephen King.

Photos by Roxanne Rix

My books available at

http://amazon.com/author/gretchenrix

http://barnesandnoble.com/c/gretchen-rix

http://smashwords.com/books/view/79235

For God’s sake, of course Twitter can be boring with BUY MY BOOK BUY MY BOOK BUY MY BOOK every link of the way, but in between all the white noise of advertising there are the gems of friendship, at least the type of pen pal relationships you had as children, and unsolicited generosity.

Mostly I don’t see it, but every once in a while someone does me a good turn. This week it is writer Seumas Gallacher who added me into his blog as having a blog of my own worth reading. That’s debatable, of course, but very generous of him.

See him here at

http://seumasgallacher.com

and have a look at one of his novels here

http://amzn.com/B005D7JNCQ

I’ve had some Twitter followers buy my books, review my books, re-tweet my tweets, comment on what I say. Very few, so I tend to remember them. And I do my part by doing the same, plus checking out some of the BUY MY BOOK spam that comes my way. I’ve even bought some of these books, read and enjoyed them, too.

If we’d all respond a bit more to one another with this type of generosity we’d all come out winners. Until that time I’d like to thank the following:

Lindsay Buroker, J.A. Konrath, Dean Wesley Smith, Blake Crouch, David Wisehart, Jan Hudson, Irene Preston,
Alexa Bourne, Julie Kenner, Elaine Wilson, M.G. King, Tammy Francis, Jessica Scott, Ricky Bush, Toni Brundage, …and Seumas Gallacher.

And speaking of generosity, if you really want to help a fellow writer, check out

http://kriswrites.com

for June 26 and follow the links to Peter David and David Farland.

Photo by Roxanne Rix.

http://amazon.com/author/gretchenrix

http://smashwords.com/books/view/105559

http://barnesandnoble.com/c/gretchen-rix

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK:  The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds edited by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

Today I finished revision number one for THE COWBOY’S BABY GOES TO HEAVEN, my sequel to THE COWBOY’S BABY which continues to sell. This was the read-through to catch inconsistencies, typos, and really badly written passages. I caught several of each of these mistakes. Next up is the edit for story.

In this initial read-through I found myself laughing out loud in three separate sections of the novel. Good for me. It’s meant to be funny. But it’s also meant to be romantic. In this second edit I’ll be paying particular attention to the romance. Hopefully that will be it. The next step is the beta reader.

If my beta reader gives the book the A-OK, it will then go through as many proofreading sessions as I can stand. I’ll have three or four other readers going through it, but ultimately I’m the one responsible. Piece of advice for you writers out there: read your novel out loud to yourself, and then read it from back to front so that the story doesn’t distract you.

So, almost done with this one. Next I’ll get back to the TALKING TO THE DEAD GUYS sequel TEA WITH A DEAD GAL. I plan to publish both books this year, and then go on to THE SAFARI BRIDE, another romance.

If you’re interested in the originals, all three of my novels are available at Amazon.com as paperbacks, at Amazon.com for the Kindle, at the Nook store for the Nook reader, and at Smashwords for Apple, Diesel, Kobo, Sony, and just about everyone else.

For those of you in Austin, THE COWBOY’S BABY and TALKING TO THE DEAD GUYS are available at BookPeople. ARROYO will be available at the World Science Fiction Convention (LoneStarCon 3) in San Antonio this Labor Day weekend.

Photos by Roxanne Rix. Covers by Streetlightgraphics.com.

http://amazon.com/author/gretchenrix

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK:  Pet Sematary by Stephen King.

Photos by Roxanne Rix.          My stories at

http://amazon.com/author/gretchenrix

I’m re-reading my novel THE COWBOY’S BABY this week, probably for the fifth or the sixth or the eighth time counting all the copy editing and proofreading I did in the beginning. And to my surprise, I like it. I’ve liked it each and every time, although this morning I discovered I used the word squashed instead of quashed (a problem a lot of other writers have, I’ve noticed) and wish I hadn’t.

This time I’m re-reading THE COWBOY’S BABY in order to create a bible of characters and settings for the sequel THE COWBOY’S BABY GOES TO HEAVEN. ( And yes, if you follow this blog you will know that I’ve already finished the first draft of  HEAVEN. I enjoy tackling things out of order.) I never planned on a sequel, but when it came time to start writing my novels for this year I saw people still buying and enjoying my first.

And now I’ll continue my title statement. If you won’t read your own books (or re-read them), how can you expect anyone else to? If nothing else, you touch base with who you used to be. And I know, some writers don’t have the time to do this. I’d expected to feel uncomfortable reading my own book; but while I can sometimes remember why I did this or how I did that or what I deleted and replaced in certain spots, mostly I’d just be enjoying the story if I wasn’t busy taking notes.

How about you? Do you ever go back and read the books you wrote? Do you still like them if you do?

Today I finished the rough draft of my new romance novel (more of a romantic comedy, really) THE COWBOY’S BABY GOES TO HEAVEN. It topped out at 79,201 words which is about 10,000 more than I intended.

It was really hard writing THE END to this one. It looks like I started work on this August 24, 2012. At the time I was trying to write two books at once, the other being a sequel to TALKING TO THE DEAD GUYS, a mystery. I wrote on the mystery during the week and the romance on the weekend.

This plan came to a dead stop when I broke my shoulder in late October. It was really hard to write anything. Eventually, I decided to concentrate on HEAVEN. Now the rough draft is done! More !!!!! Even more !!!!!!!!!!

In my opinion, the rough draft is the hardest. You face perfectly blank white pages and fill them with story. Reviewing, revising, rewriting, extra research; all of that is frosting on the cake. It will be interesting to see how long that takes me. And then I’ll get back to TEA WITH A DEAD GAL.

I’ve got a third novel waiting in the wings to be written. And a novelette/short story collection that will merge THE COWBOY’S BABY characters with the TALKING TO THE DEAD GUYS characters and be quite fun reading. This was my sister Roxanne’s idea, and a pretty good one.