Today's a pretty significant milestone for me, boys and girls: It's the deadline for me to turn in my review of the copy edited pages of the Chicken Ranch manuscript! And guess what? I beat that deadline by 24 hours and 43 minutes. This is a huge deal, because now the actual production process kicks into high gear to turn all those words I strung together into a real live book.
And I have real live information to share with you! We've had another title change (the last one, I'm pretty darn sure), with a for-true publication date nailed down as well.
Title: Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse
Author: Jayme Lynn Blaschke
Publication Date: August 1, 2016
ISBN: 978.1.46713.563.4
The process of reviewing the copyedits was long and grueling, compressed into less than a week so that we can meet the ambitious August 1 publication date--there are a bunch of events starting in September and running through the fall where we hope to promote the book, so making that August 1 date ensures it will be available for maximum exposure. And August 1 will mark the 43rd anniversary of the Chicken Ranch's closure, so that's cool, too. But the copyedit is a terribly important step in the process. Despite my going over the manuscripts what seemed like a thousand times, there were still plenty of typos and little errors on my part that the copyeditor caught. And there were more than a few additional typos, confusions and semi-big mistakes the copyeditor missed that I (thankfully) caught in my line-by-line read. I also realized, at the last possible moment, that two photos had been accidentally dropped and their cutlines lost. Fortunately, we got those restored fairly painlessly. There's 100 images in this book, people--the majority of which have never before seen publication. It's going to be very, very cool.
What took perhaps the longest to proof was my end notes section. During various rewrites and additions (remember, I was adding new material as recently as early February) some citations got moved out of place and in certain cases new citations added so that ensuing Ibids were no longer clearly linked to a previous reference. It was
very important to me that all my citations be clearly documented and referenced. Some of what I uncovered will be controversial, and some will blow up long-held ideas about the Chicken Ranch. When that happens, I don't want people accusing me of making stuff up to suit my own ends. It's all there. Check my original sources. But when I got to the last page (below) I was blown away. I numbered by end notes anew with the start of each chapter, and never bothered to total them all together. I knew I had a lot of them, but
741 citations? Holy cow, that's way more than I ever imagined. And the notes themselves contain some author's commentary, so hopefully they'll be more value-added than just a dusty list of sources.
And remember,
Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch is still available if you just can't wait for August 1 to get here:
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