I know I comment a lot about time’s supersonic fly-by, but honestly, wth July?

Days are getting shorter. We’ll be in the -ber months before you know it.

I was working on Chaos Agent up until about a week ago, when I was reminded that I needed to get Gideon and Jericho readied for re-release in the fall. This is more complicated than simply uploading a file to Sigil or Vellum. First I needed updated Word files, and while I swore I had files somewhere with all the copyedits and other changes entered, I could not find one for Gideon. So I dug up the most recent Word file I had, grabbed a copy of the trade paperback, and entered changes as I reread the book. It was a process, but it didn’t take as long as I feared.*

Over the past couple of days, I’ve gone over Gideon again to lightly edit. I changed how I refer to some people (last name vs first name). Caught a few continuity errors because those you will always have with you. Changed a few word choices. Changed the modern timeline section page from “2015” to “Present Day” to make it more current, at least for a while. There’s only so much updating I can do. Eventually the book will be stuck in time.

I do have a new cover. New covers for both books, in fact. I made them myself—they both reflect their respective settings. For Gideon, I stuck with the river/misty image theme from the Harper Voyager edition—I did love that cover. When Jericho came out the following year, the decision was made to change the look to attract a different audience, but that meant that the books no longer looked related. I like that they now look connected.  They’ll be released under “Kristine Smith writing as Alex Gordon,” Gideon on October 28th and Jericho on November 25th.

So now I need to write new cover copy for Gideon and have it proofread. Over the next several months, I will go over Jericho in the same way, format the trade paperback editions, write a short story  (another Del & Gia) and oh yeah, Chaos Agent.

*Yes, you can…extract an e-book file and convert it back to Word, but the formatting issues that can be introduced and the time needed to fix them means you wind up rereading the book anyway, so. One way or the other, it involves pulling off a bandage.