Reply To: Suggestion for formatting the book
Hi,
Thanks for the suggestions on the inserts. They ended up being much more of an issue than I’d expected in a number of ways. They were always going to be on the website, but a lot of people don’t seem to find the website. So I thought I’d include them in the book where relevant. And originally they had a different font and color and would be easy to skip. Then formatting limitations of the all sorts of various devices came into play. Not just black and white, I’d been aware of that and the paperback has the same issue, but there was the font difference, but then there were older kindles and Sony’s with no real font support. So by the I finally got it approved through various bookstores with all sorts of formatting corrections…it just kind of stuck and blended in distractedly. Not sure what I’m going to do next time, but considering the consternation they’ve caused…I think it will be different. Think I’ll see what can be done with hyperlinks, say to an appendix at the back. But again…difficult for some devices.
I think your point on Tom’s rather subdued reaction to the Courts is a valid point. He probably should have shown a reaction like “Why the hell am I living in a cave, when there is a city I could live in?” I tried to capture some of that reasoning with Antefalken’s visit to Tom’s cave…but should have had more from Tom.
However, to clear things up: Tom doesn’t know about the Courts until Antefalken takes him there. Tizzy had previously mentioned them to Rupert, but Tom wasn’t paying attention, he was too preoccupied by what was going on. Antefalken shows Tom and Rupert the bar and then goes off to talk with Lillith. Tom and Rupert explore the city, they return to the bar to wait for Tizzy and run into Boggy who is recovering from his bender. They talk, he sees link spells for the first time. Out of scene Antefalken returns, they go explore Ramses’ palace and return (we hear about this second hand).
And that’s basically all of Tom’s experience with the Courts. All other interaction there is really just Antefalken.
There was no bar fight that Tom was in with Boggy; Boggy was just really hung over, and may have been in a few battles of his own…but Tom wasn’t involved.
Or so is my recollection of what I think I wrote…there have been a number of changes and edits and I tried to keep the continuity up and keep reactions correct, I think I clearly missed a good reaction on Tom and the Courts…it was a bit underplayed.
I think a real problem one has as an author is that you write, read, edit, reread over and over again so many times that sometimes what’s in your head doesn’t match what’s on paper. Which is why the idea of Beta Readers who can point out stuff like this is a good idea that someone has mentioned. I’d been using friends, but they’re probably heard too much from me discussion wise and so aren’t as objective.
As an example, I was going through one of my later continuity edits and I suddenly realize the scene where Antefalken, Rupert and Tom go to Ramses’ palace wasn’t there…and I couldn’t find it…so I think I only wrote it in my head…