It’s been a little while since I’ve written here, given that Dave and Malcolm have been busy crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s. But the publishing wheels have been grinding on in their grinding on sort of way. With the manuscript finished and the layout designed, the pages have come back from the typesetters, still on A4, but beginning to look like a proper book. At this point, the joy that is proofreading takes place – checking that none of the t’s and i’s have lost their crosses and dots in the transfer. It’s the part of the process that I don’t really have the patience for, so thank the Lord for professional proofreaders. Though in my defence, as a rule of thumb, anyone who has edited the book shouldn’t proofread it as well – because you’re so familiar with the text, you can’t really look at it with the necessary fresh eyes to spot the errors. That’s my excuse anyway, and I’m sticking to it. In theory, you should have two sets of proofs, the second to check that mistakes from the first have been taken in. In practice, to the immense frustration of production, you can quite often end up with a third, fourth set, and even more. With hopefully all the mistakes spotted, next time we see the book, it'll be the finished product.
As Tom touched on below, it's one of the best parts of writing a book. When that first pristine copy arrives in the mail. And that's what happened today. What made it even better was that I wasn't expecting it until the end of the month. I think the book looks great - I especially love the jacket and keep reading the cover quotes over and over. Even the Shakespeare quote at the beginning (not the result of a good education, but stolen from a recent Eastenders episode) seems perfect. 
