The Brad Bergum Blog

I have posted the first two chapters online to give people a taste for what the setting of the story is all about.  I can still make minor changes to these chapters before the book is printed, so if you have any suggestions for improvement of any kind, please let me know.

I’d also like to hear any other feedback that you may have and the days tick down until the book in finally ready for sale.

All of the major editing has been finished, and I have submitted my manuscript back to them all of my changes that I hope to see in the book … so for all practical purposes, the manuscript itself has been finalized.

Now the publisher is going through the process of editing/writing the back cover and promotional blurbs and laying out the cover design (which will be based on the photo of the road going off into the distance on the “Story” page of my website).

After that, the publisher will provide me a proof of the layout of the entire book, I will review it for any changes, send it back to then, and then they will make any changes I requested and then ”push the button” to begin printing the bad boys.

I am told that this entire sets of processes will probably take until December.  I had previously not completely understood how long everything was going to take, as some of you may recall that I had previously put the date of publishing much sooner.

However, the extra time that has been invested in this book has gone directly into making substantial improvements to the story and to the quality of writing of the book, so I consider it time well spent. 

When the book does finally come out, I hope that each of you will enjoy the end result.

I turned in all of my edits a few weeks ago, and now I am just waiting for the publisher to finish their final edits (punctuation, etc.), and then I should have a version of the book to review, and after that, the book will be on the market.

Now I just need to start letting people know about this site and blog so I can get some activity on here.  It’s kind of depressing — it’s like I’m having a conversation with myself.

I guess the blog was more of a diary thus far, but I am looking forward to good discussions on it once the book is released and I start pimping this site.

I got a lot of great comments back from the editor, and I have spent most of the last couple weeks making further changes to the book.  I’ve moved some chapters around, added some more detail, and taken out some unnecessary passages (which is always hard to do).  Right now, it is mostly down to buffing of the wording of each sentence and paragraph. 

I’ve now read the book about 20 times in total, and it gets really hard to go back through it anymore.  But just one or two more times, and it should be ready to go.

My current ETA for the book being ready for sale is late August or September.

The book is currently being reviewed in detail by an editor at my publisher.  I got some initial comments back, and I am really excited by the comments I am receiving.  I think this process will improve the book enormously. 

I hope to get the complete comments back in a couple weeks, and then I will be spending a couple weeks (at least) making changes to improve the book.  Then, I am hoping, I will have a finished product of which I can really be proud.

So at this point, my estimate for the first availability of the published book is probably (at best) sometime in July.

One funny comment I did receive from the editor (that I will ignore) is that they found it unlikely that there would be a gravel road — even in rural Montana — that didn’t have a guard rail on it to prevent accidents.  It’s their job to make any comments that may be helpful (and throwaway comments don’t hurt things at all), but I just found that one to be quite interesting.  They also didn’t think it was plausible that a football team would have only 12 players (they might have missed the “six-man” part).

The comments overall have been excellent, though.  And even the comments I choose to ignore show me areas that I perhaps need to explain a bit more for the benefit of people who are not familiar with rural towns in Montana like I am.

Since I haven’t written anything for awhile, I thought it might be a good time to give everyone an update on the status of the novel.

I submitted the manuscript to the publisher, and they have read it and made some initial comments.  The novel will now be thoroughly read by an editor who will provide me with a marked up copy of the manuscript with lots of (hopefully) good suggestions for ways to improve the story.  I’m really excited to see what they come back with.  When I read through the book myself, I could tell there were sections that could be much better and parts of the story that were far from polished, but when you are that deep into it, it’s hard to figure out good ways to improve it.

I’m hoping that the editor can point out some ways to make the whole book much, much better, so that when it is finally released, it will be the best product that I can put out. 

I’m hoping to get a marked up draft from the editor in mid-May or so, and then it will probably take me a couple weeks to make changes, and then a few more weeks for further editing and other work on the publisher’s end.  I’m not sure where this puts the publication date of the novel, but I’m cautiously saying that it should be ready by mid-summer.