I had meant to follow up with another post yesterday about the book.  I met the editor of my book for the first time yesterday via e-mail.  She seems most knowledgeable concerning the process, so a lot of my own anxieties are now quelled.

There were a few minor nits she found pretty quickly scattered throughout the manuscript, but hopefully the writing style I used won’t give her too hard of a time.  Since this is my first officially published book by a real publisher, I’m trying very hard to get off on a good foot.

There were, of course, some delays getting the manuscript to the publisher.  I’m grateful that they were patient with me in working through my sudden illness and other sundry things that seemed to be conspiring against my getting it all done.

There’s still a few more pieces of back and front-matter that I need to work on based on feedback I’ve received so far, but that won’t result it anything more than a few extra paragraphs.  After pouring out this much written word, this is trivial.  The only difficulty is that I have to write about myself in the third person, something I’ve never been adept at.

The completion of the book and seeing a final publish date feels bittersweet.  When I started writing this book, I was in a downward spiral over the death of Phil and trying my damndest to get through it.  Writing this book has helped me in that regard.  Knowing that he won’t be around to see it hit bookstores puts that sinking feeling back in my gut.  But I will keep going.

Oh, and since I’ve been so secretive about the book while in the process of writing it, now I can tell everybody about it.  The name of the book is Horror Screenwriting: The Nature of Fear, and it will be showing up in bookstores around the world in November 2009.  That’s also when I have to start doing tours to support the book.