The Galley Stage

When a manuscript reaches the galley stage it's an exciting time. It's literally the last phase before getting a release date. So I was thrilled to find my galley file for The Vampire and the Vixen in my inbox earlier this week. This is my last chance to catch those pesky misspellings, grammar errors, and misuse of words. Any errors I find need to be listed out with page and line numbers.
Once I give the okay, it's going to publication as is.

Hopefully there won't be many. The mss has already gone through two edits with my editor and the read-throughs I'd given it before submitting. One major thing I found in the second round of editor edits was I'd used two different names for one of the minor charactors. Ooops.

But these types of proofreading errors are the only ones I'm supposed to be looking for. Which, as exciting as getting a galley is, can make doing this final, final read-through a little frustrating. Because at this point, it's past the time to correct or change anything about the story itself. What's on the page is on the page. At this point, if I'm second-guessing anything, I'm pretty much out of luck. My editor explicity said, "...stick to things that MUST be changed."

I honestly don't do a lot of second-guessing at this stage, but knowing I can't change anything about the plot makes this read-through very intersting. More clinical than creative.

But, like I said, it's an exciting stage to be at. My responsibility is to approve the galley. The publisher's responsibility is to create a cover. And then we'll be good to go and heading toward a release date. And there's nothing sweeter than that!

Until next time,

Happy Reading!

Debra
www.debrastjohnromance.com