This afternoon, quite unexpectedly, I was awoken from a sound nightmare (Fat Yuri of the KGB and his hired assassins were chasing me through the corridors of a large office building, and they were driving a big black limousine down the corridor) to the distinctive but hideous honk of the intercom in my flat. It turned out that the UPS man was at the outside door with a parcel for me; and this turned out to be the short-awaited* proof copies (2 ea.) of the printed edition of Writing Down the Dragon.

I am delighted with the quality of the printing, and the binding seems quite acceptable. The parchment texture in the background looks better in print than it did on the ebook cover, and there are no visible halftone dots anywhere. This, I believe, shows the wisdom of my decision (taken with the help of Sarah Dimento) to use only vector art for my covers, and not dive into the stagnant pool of Photoshopped stock art as so many people have done with their book covers.

I am sitting down to a hearty meal of Papa John’s pizza (to celebrate the occasion) and preparing to read the proof straight through for last-minute errors; also for the novel experience of reading one of my books on paper in a codex binding, as if I were one of the glorious ink-stained hacks of old. I shall be a Retro Hipster for the evening; after which, for my next trick, I shall brilliantine my hair, ride a penny-farthing bicycle up and down the street, and then stab myself brutally but accidentally in the stomach twenty-three times whilst trying to shave with a straight razor.

If I survive these things, and if the final read-through reveals no ‘issues’, I shall make the print edition of Writing Down the Dragon available to the public in the next few days.

ETA: In reading the proof copy straight through, I found one small formatting error and one textual error. (I do not guarantee that there are no others, alas.) I corrected these in the InDesign file and resubmitted to CreateSpace. The review process will have to be repeated at their end, though I do not intend to order fresh proof copies for such tiny changes; I will just use the online proofing function to make sure that the affected pages are correct. This will delay the release of the printed book a day or two longer.

*That is totally a word, dude.