Caleb's World undergoing final edits

Posted on August 25, 2015 (Subscribe to Blog)

Book 3 in the Sleep Writer series is close to completion! I have another round of editing to do, then a "fast" Kindle read, and then I'll wait for beta reader comments, do some fixes, and then it should be good to go. That will hopefully be sometime in September, or early October at the latest.

Caleb's World (Sleep Writer Book 3) Click for larger view

The cover for this book was surprisingly difficult to do. See how the world wraps upward in the background? That's because it's an inverted world about three miles across. I was fascinated when I went to see the movie Elysium because it, too, has an inverted world, only it's just a strip, the inside of a giant wheel in space. There's a similar concept at the end of Interstellar, only that world is wrapped around the inside of a massive, cylindrical craft. Mine is actually spherical and entirely fantasy, but it's still an idea that intrigues me.

And by the way, I wrote the original Caleb's World way before those two movies came out. ;-)

Anyway, I had to piece together a few different aerial shots and throw in some extra stuff. I couldn't just get a landscape and "bend" it, because although the curved effect might be there, the angle of the trees and everything else would be wrong. I had to find scenes taken from increasingly high altitudes. I wish I could have taken a hot-air balloon ride straight up into the air and got lots of photos on my way, and then I would have had a "vertical panoramic" melded together with a really accurate inverted curvature.

Anyway, you work with what you have, right? It's not perfect, but I kind of like it. And yes, there's a volcano. Even with a hot-air balloon ride, I wouldn't have found that feature in my local area!

I changed more of this pre-written, unpublished novel than I expected. I should have known. It's quite a few years old and not up to more recent standards. Reading it made me realize just how much I've streamlined my writing over the years, and putting it out as it was would have been like taking a step backward in terms of quality. So I had to rewrite a LOT, and I also restructured throughout and added new scenes while deleting others. It's really close to what it needs to be now, a true third book in the Sleep Writer series.

More information soon!

Comment by GRAEME JENKS on Wednesday, August 26, 2015...

The cover looks great. Can't wait to read it. I'm sure it will be a great addition to the sleep writer series and after reading Robot Blood it will be good to find out about Caleb.

Comment by ANONYMOUS on Wednesday, August 26, 2015...

I'm super excited to read this! It sounds like it will be the most interesting book yet, and it was also neat to hear how you made the cover— I've never thought about that before. It looks super!

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