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Game
Quest News!
March 12/06: GAME QUEST IS PUBLISHED!!
March 02/06: Well, after spending nearly a year and a half in submission limbo, Game Quest seems to have fallen into printing limbo. The printer said it would be 14 days after final approval until it was ready to ship. It's now been at the printers for a month. Every time I ask 'when is it coming?' they tell me it's in binding. It's almost done. And another week passes. If I don't hear anything again by Tuesday I'm going to get irate. Not that I haven't been irate yet, but I've been polite. Now I'm getting irritated. Their delays are really messing with my deadling and I feel like a fool for, nearly a month now, saying it'll be out any time now and STILL not having an exact date. Anyway, I've decided that I'm going to keep serializing a chapter a week, dammit, until the book is ready! So, hopefully I won't be putting up chapter 38 next week, but if I have to, I have to! I hope you enjoy chapter 37, in the mean time.
February 16/06: Game Quest draws to a close! Ok, I got off the phone with the printer this afternoon. Seems like, because Game Quest is so big, they ran out of paper, so it's been delayed by a few days. ARG! Anyway, things are moving on it and they think that the book will be ready to ship by the end of next week, which means it should be in my hands about a week after that. So, yes, still two weeks away. Things are constantly moving, but it always seems like the release is two weeks away! Anyway, I'll only be updating this site to chapter 37. That's just under two thirds of the novel and going further would involve a lot of extra HTML programming, which I don't want to do. The book should be in my hands by the time we reach chapter 37, and for those who order the book, I'll add them to a chapter email, where I'll be emailing chapter 38, 39 and 40 for the next three weeks, to make up for the time shipping can take. I'll keep everyone updated, but for now, there's at least two more updates coming after this. Thanks for your patience.
January 20/06: The UPC barcode has now been added to the cover of the book, which I will be showcasing soon (the cover, not the barcode), and that's the final design step to be done. The printer is currently doing proofs, which they will send me. Hopefully I'll get them next week some time. Once I sign off on those, the printer will go to printing 400 copies of Game Quest, which will take about 10 days, and then they'll ship me. Then the Game Quest invasion shall begin!!!
January 12/06: GAME QUEST WENT TO THE PRINTERS YESTERDAY!! OMG!!!! I feel like a massive weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Funny, since now I have to worry about SELLING this thing. Anyway, since the printer was away on vacation longer than I expected, I ended up doing a whole wackload of illustrations, just for fun, beefing up the illustrations in the novel from a lonely 5 to over 20!! Some of them I even turned into wallpapers for your computing pleasure. Check em out here. I'm not one to toot my own horn much, but looking at the book just before I sent it off, I think it turned out amazing. I couldn't have hoped for it to turn out better! Really, really pleased. I hope you will be too.
I don't know how long the process takes from submission to receiving the book. My guess is about 3-4 weeks. Either way, the countdown is on!
December 09/05: Sheesh! Well, things are going fairly well with getting the book to publication. I'm halfway through the edits now that they're FINALLY coming in. Only, now the printer is super slow in getting to me. I know it's Christmas season, but you'd think as a customer who's going to be dropping $4000 in their direction they could at least answer and email with a few simple queries!
Anyway, I'm working my hardest to get this thing out and everything is still on track. I won't be updating next week because a) I think I deserve a break for one week, especially since I'll be running around trying to see everyone for Christmas and b) so should you, so it's better to just skip a week. I may update the next one a bit sooner than the Friday, just so you don't go Game Quest Starving! Have holly jolly ones, folks.
December 29/05: BOOK PRINTING NEWS! Game Quest is 95% ready for publication. I'm just waiting for some final edits to come in and then I'm shipping the novel off to the printer, who's eagrely awaiting it! Game Quest will be ready for shipping in February! (possibly even January if things go swimmingly swell!) I'm excited, I hope YOU'RE excited! Cause I'm excited!
November 24/05: Alright! Things are finally happening! I've finally given up on anybody actually submitting their edits to me and am going straight to layout. So far I have half the book laid out. Should have the entire thing laid out by next week. I'll start talking to printers and if the edits haven't come in by the time I'm ready, tough beans. I can't wait forever. In the course of serializing it online, very few errors have popped up, so I'm confident the book is pretty solid in terms of spelling, grammar, etc... It should be, I've gone over it 5 times.
BUT THAT'S NOT ALL!! I've finally added a new game quest poll page! There you can vote and check the results of the old 'Who's your favourite main Game Quest character' poll as well as vote on the new 'Who's your favourite minor Game Quest character' poll. At the time of this writing, it's a tie between The Cool Hunter and The Sea Hag. I KNOW who voted for The Cool Hunter, and I'm PRETTY SURE who voted for The Sea Hag, so get on over there and make things interesting!
November 11/05: No real new news other than that Game Quest seems to be getting more and more publicity on the weibe. Only time will tell whether that translates into book sales and me crawling slowly out of the self-induced poverty known as 'trying to sell a book'. Good news, though, my 'editors' are FINALLY starting to get comments to me on the last chapters of Game Quest. That means that in the next week I will start laying out the book, which should go quickly. Once it's laid out, it's just a matter of getting it to the book printer and waiting for them to finish it.
November 04/05: Phew! Over the past week I've switched the entire site over to php which not only involved several arduous programming tasks, but switching over all the comments to my database...by hand! I haven't phased out the html side yet, as people may still have bookmarks, etc. pointing to the old site. I did this mostly so that I could host the comments on my own webserver, and also as it will make site changes later easier to include. Hope it doesn't mess people up too much.
October 28/05: Alright. I've narrowed down printers and think I will be going with this press in Manitoba. They're the cheapest and seem to know what they're doing. This morning a local press gave me a quote for $10,000 for 400 books!!!!!! Holy crap. That's $25 a book just for the COST of the book! Anyway, now the trick is to lay out the last half and get it to the press. And now it looks like I'm going to be putting a $4000 investment in just the books alone. Go big or go home, I figure. I just hope there are people out there willing to plop $17 to $20 (cdn) on my book...
October 21/05: The countdown begins!! Finally we're in Part 2 where everything heats up and goes crazy-go-nuts. I'll be going crazy-go-nuts too as I desperately try to harang my editors to get me back their comments so I can layout the book and give it life. (or, at least, not a painfully expensive quick death!)
I've stared calling printers to get quotes. The book looks like it'll be about 525 pages (yipes!) and it's going to cost me about $2500 to print 200 copies. If the book does well, I'll do a 2nd edition. I have to say, I'm bad at promotion. But having $2500 of debt and several caseloads of fat books in my apartment should motivate me to move them somewhat... I'll keep you updated, but it looks like the book will cost about $18 (Canadian), which is pretty dang good for a book of that thickness, plus signed by the author. That's if, of course, you order it through me. Because bookstores take 60% commissions on books, the 'official' price tag on the book will be more like $25, just so I can make about 50 cents on each book I get into the store...assuming they'll take them...
Hope you enjoy Part A of the latest chapter.
October 13/05: Wow. It's really hard for me to believe that we're at the end of Part 1 already. And people are still with me! There's a lot of build up to this novel, which I was worried people might not make it through. However, if people are still with me at this point (particularly online), then the novel must have something going for it! Part 2 is where all that exposition starts coming together, starting off with the real big bang chapters of 20A and 20B. Ever wanted to know who would win in a death match: the adventure game or the 3D-shooter? Well, next week you just might find out...
October 07/05: Holy Parser Error! Only one more chapter to go until the end of Part 1 of Game Quest!!! Part 2 is where things really start going crazy-go-nuts! I hope you can contain your excitement.
Oh yeah, and it was my birthday last Sunday. Cash will be fine.
September 30/05: Nothing much to report. Just finished going over the edits to Part 1 that have come in. Despite getting family members and friends to go over GQ while I was away for summer, none of them has done it - or, at least, very much of it! Even my mom who's a professional editor! Gack! I'm still shooting for a Christmas deadline, but this is slowly becoming unlikely, particularly as I'm swamped with other stuff and there doesn't seem to be a real clamour at my door to release the thing or die. I'd rather release a flawless book than rush it to press when there isn't a big demand. We'll see. I should have more time this next week to start laying the chapters out into InDesign (which I will be dropping a hefty, hefty sum into purchasing this week.)
September
23/05: Holy Dungpiles!
A LOT has
happened since my last news update. I went to Vancouver, then spent 4
weeks in Japan where I rode bullet trains, stayed in a capsule hotel,
went to an onsen and got so sick pus started coming out of my eyes,
among other things (things I did...not other things that started coming
out of my eyes...) - after that I went to India for 2 weeks where I met
a bunch of cool people, haggled, bought carpets, yada yada yada. You
don't want to hear about that.
You probably also don't want to hear that after I got back to Canada I
moved to another city and moved into a new apartment. Because the
telephone company is one strike, it'll be at least another week before
I get high speed Internet (this update brought to you by dial-up!). And
just as I was getting my stuff sorted and ready to get into laying out
Game Quest for FINAL PUBLICATION
(on my newly scratched monitor) my
computer had a major disaster which involved my OS failing to boot AT
ALL. I had to switch drives and reinstall everything. Should be all
good now. Getting back into the groove and I'm gonna bust my ass to get
this novel out and in your hot little hands (you're gonna support the
independent
arts,
right? Please oh please....) before the Christmas
season. Not sure if I can do it, but wish me luck. If you wanna keep my
motivation up,
send me comments.
I love em. I need em.
In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the new chapter and are starting to
get into things. Believe it or not, a lot of the novel is really still
being set up. Chapter 21, I would say, is when the book is finally
going full speed, sending you careening towards the inevitable
ending!
Yes, I will be posting chapters from
Part 2: The Dark Lord,
online.
I'll probably stop updating when the book comes out, but until then,
expect a chapter every week!
July 21/05: Alright, this is the
last news update there'll be for a while. But there's some good stuff
happening: Besides the new chapter, you can now download a sneak
preview of how the book will look - Click
here to read Chapters 1 through 7 in pdf form!
I hope it thrills you madly and makes you count the days until the book
is ready for purchase!
I leave for Vancouver, Japan and India for 7 weeks as of tomorrow. As I
said before, Game Quest will still be updated every Friday, thanks to
my good friend Andrew. I'll still be answering emails and reading
comments - just not every day, obviously! I hope you all stick around
for and enjoy the next chapters while I'm gone. Have a great summer!
July
15/05: Not much news. Slowly
getting prepared for my big trip to Asia, so you will hear very little
from me after next week. Game Quest chapters, of course, will be
uploaded every Friday and I'll be checking my email and the comments
whenever I can get Internet access. For those who are coming to Game
Quest via my Live Journal account, or another website, I suggest you get
on my maillist
if you don't think you'll remember to check back every Friday, since I
won't be announcing updates on those sites until my return. I hope you
all stick around until my return and, even better, until the
publication of Game Quest this Fall!
July
08/05: Woohooo!!
This week I finished my final edit of all 350-some pages of Game Quest!
The fact that, after 4 times of doing this, I'm still enjoying it, is
encouraging to me that it's a good book. I've now begun the layout and
illustrations for the book (it'll have about 5-6 illustrations,
including the cover), which is fun. Sometime around when the 6th or 7th
chapter goes up I'll be putting online a pdf of the first 7 chapters.
For those of you following online, it'll be a sneak preview of what the
book will look like. For those joining the story late, it'll be an easy
way to play catch-up.
Well, I'm having fun with this project. It's nice to see that it is
being received well in the adventure gaming community. Getting it out
to the general literary public is proving more difficult but I'll work
on that more when I get back from vacation. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed
the latest chapter and I'll see you all again next week.
July
01/05: Alright, so it looks like
I'm still alive after the cross-country move and thus another chapter
of Game Quest! Now I only have to survive the 8 flights to and from
Japan & India this summer and we're all good. Traveling across
the country, once I had everything packed, was fun. It took three and a
half days and I spent a lot of my time in the car thinking about
polemics and small Game Quest edits I wanted to make. Obsessive, I
know, but there wasn't much else to do in the car. The funnest part of
the trip was probably staying in el cheapo motels in the middle of
nowhere and writing in the bathtub. I didn't have a bath in the place
where I was living in Toronto. Writing in an actual notebook was great.
I haven't done that in so long and I much prefer it to the computer,
but it's so damn slow! My poor hand can't even keep up with my
thoughts. It takes 5 minutes to write something down that would take
thirty seconds on a computer. I'm a fast typer and my hand writing is
totally illegible to anybody but me and even then for only a day or two
after I write it. Then it becomes hieroglyphics.
Ah well, not too much Game Quest related news other than that I'm
extremely close to finishing my final edits and have begun laying out
the book. At some point here I may be offering readers a sneak preview
of the book's design. And, of course, Chapter 4 is up today!
June
23/05: This week's update is a
bit early because I have to move across the country in a few hours.
Hopefully I'll get there in time to put up the next update! XP Game
Quest seems to be doing pretty well. It's now easily the most visited
part of my website - even over The
Chocolate Milk Challenge
and If
Computer Games Were Free...
In the background I'm busting my ass doing final edits to the work.
Even though I was super satisfied with the first two drafts, I'm happy
with the edits I've been doing lately - ties the book together a bit
better. (Don't want anyone disappointed with the ending!) I've also
started designing the inside of the book and creating the illustrations
(I usually illustrate my books...this one will have maybe 4 to 5
illustrations) which look pretty cool. I've finally got an idea of how
many pages this is going to be in book form...it'll be in the 450-500
page range. What
a whopper!
But it's all pure goodness, folks. The stuff you're reading now? We're
just getting started
with the craziness and suspense.
Sometime around chapter 6 or so, I hope to release a pdf on this site
with the first 6 chapters laid out in book form, so you can save it to
your computer, or print it out and read it somewheres else. Even if
you've been following online fairly steadily, it'll be cool b/c it'll
be kind of like a sneak preview of what the book will look like. I'm
very pleased with it. I hope you are enjoying reading and will stick
with me for the next chapters.
And now
for a juicy tidbit for those who actually come back here and read the
news section - it is more than
likely that I will be publishing MORE
than the 19 chapters of the first part online. I will be going into
Part 2, probably up to chapter 20B (it's split into two for fun and
readability reasons), maybe even as far as 24/25. You heard it here
first, folks!
June
17/05: Wow!
The response to the first chapter of Game Quest has been great! The
feedback from folks over at the AGDI
and Adventure
Game Studio
forums (as well as a few others I've let know about this place) has
been very positive. A few people even linked to my page from their site
without me asking!
I even posted over at Sierra
Gamer
and KEN WILLIAMS himself
responded with suggestions on how to promote my book!!!!!!
I'm really glad. I mean, I BELIEVE MY BOOK IS MOST EXCELLENT! But I'm
glad they think so too...at least so far! It'll be interesting to see
the reaction to chapter 2, which totally switches things up!
Part 1 of my cunning plan (The Letting People Know about my Book Phase)
is well under way. When I think of what Part 2 is, I'll let you know.
In the meantime, I hope you are totally getting into the Game Quest
Goodness! And if you don't want to forget when the next chapter is up, get
on my maillist.
I hate spam as much as you do, so it'll only be used for its intended
purpose.
June
10/05: Alright! Enough is
enough! Game Quest is a long novel that I conceived of in early 2002
and wrote, very quickly, over the span of 10 months while I was
hopelessly unemployed, finishing in early 2003. Since then, I have
submitted the book to several publishers and agents with little luck. I
don't think they think that people who play games also read. Anyway,
this wouldn't be such a problem if the book weren't of such a timely
nature. I'm not one for waiting around and jumping through hoops and
decided what better way to follow the independent spirit of the
companies and characters in this novel than to publish the novel myself!
I'm very proud of this novel and think it's one of the best things I
have written. I'm not about to let is flounder just because the
publishing industry doesn't want to take a chance on it. Two years has
already been way too long letting it sit and so I'm going to take the
initiative and publish this piece myself. While I'm getting everything
tightened up and laid out, I will be serializing the first third of the
novel here in regular installments. I hope you'll stick around to read
during that time.
If you'd like, add yourself to the mail list to
be notified when the next chapter comes online
or be
notified when the book is published.
Or, you can pick up the www.leopoldmcginnis.com
 feed
to learn about updates.
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