Wowza. It’s August! What’s new with all of you? I passed a milestone last month in that I logged in over 500,000 words edited—a personal best for me! I’ve also got a new book box coming out later today, so don’t forget to sign up for that. Especially if you like to watch the world burn.
What I mean is, it’s themed to my favorite type of fiction: apocalyptic. I don’t know why I’ve always been fascinated with it, especially given that I’m so wired in these days, but apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction has been a favorite of mine since I was a teenager. Among my top favorites? Battlefield Earth, Ender’s Game, The Hunger Games, Lucifer’s Hammer, Swan Song. In fact, if you take out epic fantasy and middle-grade fantasy, almost everything I count as favorites have to do with some kind of doomsday scenario.
Yeah, you’ve been there, haven’t you? You’re off to a great start, then suddenly you’re Googling some small thing to fact-check whether some obscure temple in a remote country you’ll never visit was still standing in a specific year and could actually reveal a secret hieroglyphic during the specific season in the book, because despite the fact that you’re editing fiction, if it’s not right, you’ll sit awake at night wondering if that’s legit or if readers will forgive the author and their obviously incompetent editor for missing that little tidbit of information.
And in the end, you find yourself reading about some lost civilization that used to live in that obscure temple in the remote country you’ll never visit.
Oh my god, I’m totally not speaking from experience.
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