Draft two of the paperback interior for THE OAK AND THE MOON is currently under close scrutiny. Even closer scrutiny begins in a few days by a take-no-prisoners proofreader who’s doing the final pass.

I’ve compared my final Word doc to the formatted pages to check that all the Irish and other italicized words came over correctly. Two computers make this process easy. I completed it in about an hour last night. See below—that’s the Word doc on the left, paperback version on the right.

Now I have to continue my read-through of the whole thing. It’s weird to read this book. After the editing process it becomes such a polished thing, so much improved over the rough version that’s still in my head. It will take several reads of it in its new form before it sinks in.

Tonight I’ll take a break from proofreading to watch the supermoon eclipse—a supermoon + Blood Moon visible from my part of the U.S. We have heavy cloud cover as I write this, but according to the weather forecast, it’s supposed to clear up just in time. If not, I’ll be watching the live stream on Time.com.

Interesting timing for a lunar eclipse as I finish this book. And that’s all I’m sayin’ about that. :)

Progress of THE OAK AND THE MOON
First Draft: Complete (160,627 words)
My revisions: First round complete, final round complete (161,377 words)
Professional editing: Complete
Proofreading: Complete
Formatting: In progress
Final proofread: In progress
Cover art: 50% complete, remaining half starting soon