More Progress

It's been a busy month. The main thing has been getting the text finalized and off to the publisher for final proofing. Pat did an incredibly thorough job combing through the copy, fixing glaring errors and suggesting improvements. It was then up to Guy and me to sift through her inputs, accepting most, but making sure we were happy with the final wording.

Maintaining consistency was challenging, and

all the moreso with multiple authors. Guy was the key maintainer of a style guide without which this would have been possible. We settled on the Chicago Manual of Style for the fundamentals, but there were book-specific issues that required our own local version. We wrestled with questions like: Backcast, one word or two? The Gorge, capitalized? Always? Temperature, 52°F, no space before the F? Wenthworth or Wentworth's Location? You can find it both ways on different maps.

In the end, there had to be one person to take final responsibility, to read it through for the 20th time (spell out twentieth or 20th OK?...stop). Guy took the bull by the horns and spent a marathon Sunday combing through the words. He shot it out to the Boys for a final look. All responded promptly with some minor adjustments, and it was off to the Peter E Randall by the Nov 1 deadline. We are expecting that between Pat and the rest of us, we've been pretty thorough, so maybe we'll not get much back in the next round before Thanksgiving. Fingers crossed. All this to be ready in time for a May 3 publication date.

Still lots to be done on the business and promo side. And, Guy, Bob and I assembled hi-res image content which Guy is now sorting through. Looking forward to seeing the initial designs for the guts of the book soon.