
It’s been so long since my last update on this site I’m afraid some of you will be wondering what’s become of Thomia. Well, we’ve been silent but we haven’t been idle. Our diligent designer Chanishka has been hard at work turning my manuscript into page artworks. This has been a slow process, as it always is, with much back-and-forth between editor (the hat I have to wear at this point in the process) and designer. With such an enormous book, it takes time; we’ve been at it since April. The first half of the text was delivered in early July and has been with the proofreader, Jill, for some weeks; tonight I meet her to collect the finished chapters from her and give her the rest.
I hope she hasn’t found too many errors, I fear the wrath of Chanishka...
We aren’t finished yet, of course. The front and back matter of the book – title and half-title pages, contents, preface, indexes, etc – remain to be done. There are relatively few of these pages but they are fiddly and take a lot of attention to get just right. We want Thomia to look and feel as good as we can make it, so we’re following Robert Louis Stevenson’s advice to writers: ‘nothing should be done in a hurry that can be done slowly.’ I think we’re still on schedule for a pre-Old Boys’ Day launch in February, but I couldn’t swear to it just now. I’m a writer and editor, not a publisher, and I’m learning as I go along.
Still, we’ve passed another milestone, and I shall be treating myself to a small Laphroaig tonight.
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