Behold! For now I wear the human pants! I have processed all machete squad and agent notes on One Salt Sea, gone through the book end-to-end to make sure everything still makes sense, returned it to The Agent, and made final tweaks based on her commentary. Now it's finally off to have a nice nap on The Editor's desk while she's in Australia, which means a) I made my deadline, and b) I can finally get to work on Ashes of Honor.

The current book stats:

Pages, 420.
Words, 113,912.
Chapters, thirty-five.
Diet Dr Pepper consumed, probably equivalent to Loch Ness.

Despite vicious trimming and dropping several sub-plots, One Salt Sea still wound up fifty pages/almost 7,000 words longer than Late Eclipses, because frankly, there's a lot of shit going on, and very little of it is "padding" in any sense of the word. Toby has matured a lot from where I first met her, in the short story that pre-dated Rosemary and Rue, and it shows. I've matured a lot as a writer, and that shows, too. This book is so much better than I expected it to be, and I'm so excited to have The Editor turning it into something even more awesome.

In conclusion...

...DINO DANCE PARTY!

The pre-order period for my third studio album, Wicked Girls, will officially be closing at the end of this week, as we are basically ready to go to the printer—I just need to get the final liner note files and contact my project manager at Oasis, and we're in business. For details on the album, please check out my albums page, where you can find the track list, lyrics, some details on our featured performers, and the truly kick-ass cover art.

To place your order, go to:

https://seananmcguire.com/secure_order.php

Pre-orders follow this price scale:

* $18.00 USD: First domestic pre-order.
* $16.00 USD: Second domestic pre-order.

* $20.00 USD: International pre-order.
* $16.00 USD: Second international pre-order.

This is because of the way the mailing costs work. A third CD would cost the same as a first; this assumes that the CDs are being shipped together. So two CDs to the same US address would be $34.00, but two CDs to two different US addresses would be $18.00 each. Hope that's not too confusing.

(Basically, all pre-orders are a base cost of $15.00, plus shipping. Please be aware that if you order two CDs at the same time, they will be sent to the same address.)

Since we also need to pay mixing costs, we're taking album sponsors; you can submit sponsorships through the order form. 285 pre-orders have been sold out of a possible 300, meaning that 15 pre-orders remain. All pre-ordered CDs will be signed and numbered. Because it is so late in the year, only pre-ordered CDs will have a chance of arriving before the holidays. I can't make any promises, but I'm going to try to do the majority of the mailing in time for Christmas. I will not be getting stock to filk dealers or CD Baby until after the first of the year.

Questions? Comments? Glee!