Yes, that’s right.  My wonderful editor Anna has sent her final edits.  No more passive verbs!  Aka my nasty little habit.  This is also a transition for me since I have been writing away on my second novel, Red Dirt Claws.  Emma hat off.  Alex hat on.  In other words, a drastic channel change from comedy to drama.

In Red Dirt Claws, I’m leaving Emma standing in her yellow bikini in front of Wyatt flirting her way right to his heart.  –Channel Change — To The Mason List where Alex begins her story with a mental breakdown in the opening scene.

Here’s what’s left in the process of getting The Mason List published.  The final edit is the next step.  I basically have two copies of the book right now.  One copy from my editor with all the grammatical, spelling and sentence structure clean-ups.  I have another copy that I have edited with story line and scene clean-ups.  I will be taking my final copy and merging pieces into the editor’s final copy.

For me, this is the most tedious part of writing a novel.  Line by line.  Word by word comparison of the two copies.  This story is approximately 137,000 words which is roughly 550 novel pages.  In Microsoft Word, my copy is 461 pages.

The picture below shows the side-by-side comparison.  The story begins at 8:15 pm.  Yes, that means what you think it means for my friends who know of my LOST obsession.  I slipped that little bread crumb into The Mason List.

I do most of my writing in Microsoft Word.  I also use WriteWay Pro.  The program is really good with organizing chapters and exporting out in manuscript form.  I spent the final six months of writing The Mason List in WriteWay Pro.  As each chapter comes to a close, I will be feeding the pieces back into that program.

Once I get a better grasp on the final pass through the novel, I should be able to schedule a release date.  I am very excited to introduce the world to The Mason List!