A Thank You from Worldbuilders….

Heya everybody,

So Monday morning I turned in the pretty-much-entirely-done manuscript for The Slow Regard of Silent Things.

Want a peek at the French Cover?

(That was a rhetorical question. I was going to show it to you no matter what…)

Edit: As the comments below mention, the above cover is not actually the French cover. This is:

(I’m sure you can see how I made the mistake at four in the morning.)

It’s a hard thing for me, letting go of a manuscript. Other authors are very matter of fact about it. But for me, obsessive word tinker than I am, I hate knowing that after a certain point I won’t be able to go in and fix things any more. That means the time leading up to my deadline tends to be an endless white-hot madness of intense, obsessive work.

So the last two days have consisted of me catching up on my sleep and trying to remember exactly what it is that I *do* when I’m not obsessively revising 14 hours a day.

I know it was pretty bad because when I came home tonight my little boy said to me: “You know Dad, you just got done with a deadline.” He said the last word with special emphasis. “And deadlines are a *lot* of work.”

It made me smile, not only because he’s cute as a button. But because it’s always nice to get some sympathy.

But it also let me know that he and Mom had had a talk about deadlines. Which probably meant he had gone to her with questions like, “Why don’t I ever see dad any more?” and “How come daddy falls asleep every time he sits down?”

Anyway, now that I’m at least slightly recovered, I get to start catching up on some things that I’ve been putting off.

Like posting the thank-you video from last year’s Worldbuilders fundraiser.

Before you watch it, I’d just like to thank everyone involved. We blew the top of things this last year, and your generosity has changed thousands of lives….

Wait, rather than type all of this out, I’m going just put up the video. There’s no real sense in me saying thank you before the thank-you video, is there?

Also, even all those wonderful people can mess things up sometimes, so we’ve got the usual blooper reel as well.

Honestly, I make much better bloopers than I do raw video….

Thanks for being awesome everybody.

And if you missed out on last year’s fundraiser. Or if watching that video made you eager for the next one to start. Well… we’ve got a little surprise coming up in a couple of weeks. We’re going to be trying something a little different early in July.

So keep an eye out for that.

pat

P.S. Yes. I’m an inveterate tease. You should all know that by now….