The Deixis Press Weekly - Issue #9
This has been an unbelievably busy week! At the end of it, a book is born …
Monday, 10 May
You guys are going to love Some Rise By Sin so much. I can hardly describe it (which is a shame since I’m the one who has to sell it, after all), but let it be known that it is so meticulously explored and the language is so rich that it’s like gorging yourself on trifle at Christmas: even when you’re full you can’t stop, and frankly you don’t want to.
This luxuriance poses un petit problème for both me and James (my proofreader): the author, Siôn Scott-Wilson, is frankly too good at research. When it comes to making sure things are right on the page, our linguistic muscles have been stretched to their absolute limits. The result, though, is that James and I are now experts in Regency street slang; you will be too by the time Siôn is finished with you.
In addition to learning that a “crocus” can mean a “bad doctor,” and looking up which words take an -ize ending even in British English, today I also accidentally deleted a Facebook ad for the press that was getting really good results–which was rather unfortunate because I was having a conversation with someone who wants to submit a short story collection when submissions open.
By the way: I LOVE SHORT STORIES, and I look forward to seeing them in June. The great thing about publishing independently is that I can take risks on things like short story collections–risks bigger publishers in the UK don’t want to take, for whatever reason.
Tuesday, 11 May
So I’m back in the typesetting zone. This time it feels more joyful and less manic, probably because I did all the insanely hard work of remembering how InDesign works the first time, when I was putting together Richard Gadz’s The Workshop of Filthy Creation, plus now I have a template set up. Also, top tip for would-be typesetters: I did a lot of formatting in the Word doc first so that it pastes into the template really easily. I was able to get the initial stages of typesetting done for about half of the novel in roughly 3 hours. Is that good? Well, it’s good for me—no idea if it’s good in general.
Ever the technical writer, after this round is done, I’m going to make myself a little document explaining how to do stuff, stuff to remember, and keyboard shortcuts for all that stuff. Stuff stuff stuff.
I’ve also realized, in the course of typesetting THIS book, that I made a mistake in the OTHER book. Only a teensie-weensie design mistake-ette. I can fix it quickly.
Wednesday, 12 May
My publicist is asking today for a finalized cover for publicity work that will be going out soon, so I think we will shortly be doing a cover reveal for Some Rise By Sin!
I also had a conversation with Siôn today about how he would like me to format a fictional gravestone that is mentioned in the book; it turns out that it is not at all fictional, and in fact I can (and will) go see it at the Church of St Leonard, Shoreditch. Let us all light a candle tonight in memory of Mr John Onely. Ye know not when the time is.
Thursday, 13 May
I finished AN ENTIRE BOOK today. Front matter, acknowledgements, internal actual book: the whole lot. I made a real-life book.
And Libby finalized the cover.
That’s right, folks, you’re here for the first Deixis Press cover reveal. I am so proud of Libby for taking on this challenge, and I’m proud of Siôn for letting us do something quite a lot different from what he had envisioned. The engraving we have used comes from the Wellcome Collection, and it shows two Resurrection Men—just like the characters in Some Rise By Sin. I’m elated that the Wellcome Collection has licensed it for commercial use.
Now I have just one more teeny-weeny problemette. The printed books will be gorgeous. The .epub works fine. BUT: I need to generate a Kindle file (yeah, only the most important digital format) that does not completely mess up all of my special characters. I’ve used a few, some at the beginning of each chapter, and some to signify breaks in the text. Lovely little flourishes, they are. But the .mobi format just breaks them. So I think I’m going to have to create new .mobi-friendly files with Unicode characters in their place. Should be the work of a few minutes, tops (she says, optimistically).
Friday, 14 May
Yeah, yeah, I’ve got a whole day of work ahead of me: fixing Richard’s book’s formatting, coming up with .mobis that aren’t broken (for both books, because Richard’s will have the same issue), writing my how-to guide while it’s all fresh in my mind so I don’t have to re-learn it next time, and so on. But this morning I’m doing some sort of immersive game thing at Westfield—an event where I am out out. I’m so excited about doing A Thing! So I’ll have to make up my work later. I foresee a busy weekend.
Just look at that cover. *chef kiss*
Feel free to reply to this newsletter to tell me HOW MUCH YOU LOVE IT!
Yours,
Angel