...dagnabbit

Good news: I have found a way to do an efficient read-through of Beauties before I send it off to my dear, dedicated Beta-readers.

Bad news: It sucks balls and takes an age to do.

The method? I get my computer to read my book to me and follow along. Chapter by chapter. I have to take the time to devote myself to this so that my Betas have more to enjoy and less to do. Y'all should be backup to make sure my continuity is intact and all that.

At least the typos are being purged from the manuscript before you get it. I won't say "all", but definitely "most".

What is amusing is that the speech algorithms take weird words and make them sound even weirder. Which is why I do a read-along. My mythical alcoholic beverage "Sukun'a'ii", pronounced in my head, "soo-koon-ah-ee" becomes "soo-koon-eye-two". Which always trips me the heck up.

Maybe I should spell it with one I and see what happens.

Later. I'll leave it that way and see what my Betas say. It's a simple replacement protocol so I'm cool with it.

I'm also pondering the concept of sending out Adapting to the same agents who rejected KFZ, since it's also (a) young adult, (b) very strange, and (c) around about their speed.

And since nobody wanted a physical copy of anything I currently have in my Smashwords library, I'll save the whole print-and-ebook deal via Lulu for the books that the agents reject. Possibly starting with KFZ.

I have three agents to go and one of them insists on snail-mail submissions (yikes!). I really, really hope I don't have to go that far because snail-mail is a royal pain. I wanna track this thing all the way there and all the way back.

Three months¹. Aigh. I'll have most of another novel written by the time that noise is over with. I speculated that I could plausibly send the snail mail to these folks first and spend the intervening time collecting rejections from other agents before this lot were any the wiser. That might actually become the future plan.

I could even ready two packets. One for KFZ and one for Adapting... and by the time they get back to me about one of them, possibly a third packet for Beauties. I think I'll refer to this lot of A2B's as "the slow track". My books could plausibly race through two to four other A2B's in the time it takes them to open the dang envelope.

Careful juggling and timing may be necessary to not accidentally be rude, though. I can't really afford to be rude to A2B's because growing a good reputation is something I need.

Worse. I just found out that the agent I'm recommended is not taking unsolicited manuscripts at this time. Oh hooray. I was worried I might actually have a chance with the same agent as Lois MacMaster Bujold.

...and now I need chocolate...

Grump.

I need to get on with things.