The Awkward Author

I am formatting the latest Goldenford book, Tainted Tree. This particular author has made life more difficult for me than any of the others. Firstly, she has a Family Tree, which pops up three or four times. It’s in a different font and, now that the book has been reduced down to book size, it doesn’t fit the page. And where does the first one go? On page 1, or before page 1? Then there is the fact that the book is in three parts. Should I have a new page showing Part 1; Part 2; Part 3? It is a big book already. We can’t really afford extra pages doing nothing. So I’ll have to put it above the chapter heading. Oh yes - just to be bloody minded, each of this wretched author’s chapters has a title. I’ll have to go through and make sure they’re all in the same font and, of course, that means there’s a page of Contents too, so I’ll have to put in the correct page numbers there.

Even though I’m so irritated with her, I’ll allow her to speak for herself:

As far as chapter titles are concerned, I used them initially because it helped me find my way around the book when I was writing it. Then I just left them because I quite like them. It’s like thinking up clever captions. Perhaps I should have worked in advertising instead of a plumbing business. The family tree pages are there to help the reader keep tabs in the early part of the book. But they don’t go right the way through – I don’t want to make it too easy for the reader to find out the entire plot by examining the last family tree. As for splitting the book in three parts, it did that naturally. And it’s no good the technical person moaning at me, because I haven’t totally finished the Tainted Tree edit, yet. I’ve got to have a quick glance at some of the alterations and make sure I haven’t put in new mistakes. A spell-check is called for, I think. I’ll let you know when it’s finished – and so will she.