There is progress being made. Honest.
The story so far: I thought I’d order a proof copy of The Maker’s Mask before I got into the whole trying to buy an ISBN thing. The proof copy arrived. I took one look at it and snatched it back from my husband saying ‘You can’t read this one! I need to change a whole bunch of stuff!’ and then spent the next few days trying to sort out the baffling problem that had caused several sections that were supposed to be in italics to… not be in italics any more, not to mention pruning overlong sentences and playing traffic cop to passages of dialogue where it was not clear who was speaking. Also, there were some small changes I wanted to make to the cover.
Eventually, I got something that I was reasonably happy with and uploaded it, and discovered that buying an ISBN was not as alarming as I’d thought. (I’d had a good long hard look round the Lulu site and could not find a distribution package for the UK – the only one they seemed to be selling was for the US and Guam. After briefly considering moving to Guam, I decided that they must want my money and that therefore the distribution package must be hidden somewhere, and it showed up as an option in the publishing process so I bought it.)
And then I discovered that I needed to buy another proof copy to approve before the book went live.
So, I’ve got the second proof copy, but after going through the first proof copy word by word and getting about a third of the way through a close edit of The Hawkwood War on the screen in the hope that I can get away without buying two proof copies of that, I am in a state where the words just dance unhelpfully in front of my eyes on the screen and it’s all like staring at a Wordle.
So, yes, there is progress being made, but right now I’m only really in a state to do minor household chores, say ‘You’re a kitty!’ to the cats, and watch I’m In The Band and Pointless. Normal service will be resumed shortly, we hope.
Ankaret Wells 
Progress is good, dancing words is not – hope you feel able to tackle it again soon!
Well, I managed to edit my way through chapter four of War this afternoon, which is a milestone, because that was where the book stuck for about three months when I was writing it.
Definitely good progress then!
It became known for a while in my head as the Evil Corridor Scene, even though there were several other scenes in the book that actually involved much more evil corridors. Anyway, I’m glad to be past it. 🙂
Also, I’m now on to the scene with the hero and his valet which made me think while I was writing it ‘If this doesn’t make people write slashfic, nothing will’, which is entertaining. 🙂
Pointless! I only just noticed today that the new series has started so I have been catching up on iPlayer. I’m not sure I like the messing around with the formats of the rounds, though I am pleased to say that I knew all the children’s book characters.
Yes, they definitely seem to be trying to make it move faster – I did think the first series was too slow, but I’m not sure what I make of the new rounds on this one. I think I probably just need time to settle in and get used to the new format.
On the other hand, now that I’ve seen Alexander Armstrong finding out that he’s descended from William the Conqueror, it’s all become even more entertaining watching him make pained faces as people get their geography wrong. I’m not sure why.