Preparing Discord's Shadow for publication has been rather like getting ready for Christmas: you have a list of things to do and things to get that seems to get longer rather than shorter as the days race by, then just as you're ready to throw up your hands and resign yourself to being too late, they're all done. There are still a few things on my publication list, such as reformatting the manuscript for Kindle and paperback but, at the risk of jinxing myself, they should be easily doable in the 12 days before publication. The main things is, Discord's Shadow has been uploaded to Smashwords and passed for the prime catalogue, so barring meteor strikes or solar storms, you should be able to read it from 6th November. You can access the first chapter from the Exiles of Ondd page.
I've lost count of the number of proofreads and edits the novel's had. I write the initial drafts in longhand because I can take my paper and pencil anywhere and they don't run out of battery power, and because I find keying-in useful for highlighting all kinds of faults such as repetitions of words and phrases, poorly constructed sentences and inconsistencies. Hopefully, none of these remain!
I can't say typing is my favourite job. My right hand has a tendency to get ahead of my left, so I produce lots of transposed letters. If I had a pound for every time I typed in 'teh' instead of 'the' I'd have to pay supertax. When the typos don't make me want to tear my hair out, they can be funny, as can the alternatives suggested by the spellchecker. Apart from the fact that I now have enough typos to supply names for all the characters in my next epic, I'm pleased that I made the effort.
Discord's Shadow wouldn't be complete without its own Iyessi songs to go with each chapter. I've written 31 of these too, and I'll be putting them on my website in the coming weeks. Meanwhile you can get more details, and pre-order your copy before the 6th November publication date at a special discount by visiting http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1094827