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Well, if there's anyone not yawning and still following this journey, I've just put the final touches to the copy edit. This is the major edit where any slashing or re-writing needs to be done. It's a tedious, challenging process, particularly for a writer such as myself who HATES editing. However, I know it's where I take my medicine and pay my dues for all that carefree attitude in the early stages! 700 pages are now winging their way to Sydney, where all the amendments will be taken into the new mss by the typesetter and I suspect we'll go straight to first pages. This is the edit where you actually see the book set up for the first time in its formal chapters. It is no longer in courier new and double line spacing with lots of scrawl all over it. Suddenly it's on pristine pages, the size of a trade format book (or paperback, depending on publication) and you are looking at the chapter headings in their formal look and maps, acknowledgements, all sort of things start to filter in. It's your first glimpse of how the finished book is going to appear. And it's at this point we do what's called the line edit. Every word is scrutinised again so that we are sure all the major amendments have been understood and taken in correctly by the typesetter. Any last clangers are sorted at this edit and grammar is really shaken down to get it slick. I'll be working on that copy edit in about a month and I'll keep you posted. I like the story!

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sounds awesome...