Mortal Coils ARC

Advanced reading copies of Mortal Coils arrived a few days ago. I let one sit on my bookshelf for two days, just staring at it...and then finally got up the nerve to crack it open...even to read a few lines.

Okay—all in order. I set it back down.

Yesterday, I read the opening. It was good.

I read a few spots at random. Still good.

Then I got sucked into the story—finally looking up again after an hour.

Whew. It all still works.

Now my editor and I get to send these out and start asking, begging, and blackmailing people for cover quotes.

Foul

Saturday I got a package from TOR. I was excited because I knew advanced reading copies of MORTAL COILS were being sent--so I ripped open the envelope with great anticipation...

...only to found a “foul."

A foul is the leftover copy-edited-to-death manuscript—complete with markups and dog-eared pages. They come back to haunt authors when their publisher stub their toes on it one to many times and decide it’s time to get rid of the things.

As you can see in the picture, this particular foul is GHOSTS OF CORAL (ONYX)—boomeranging back to me a year and half after I turned it in.

I wonder if any authors keep these things? By the time you get them you have copies of the real books, plus you usually have archived electronic copies.

My first impulse was to throw it away, but then I remembered that there are two chapters cut from this book (for pacing reasons). I wouldn’t want to destroy those without first pinging Microsoft Licensing (Microsoft holds the copyright, after all)...so today I’m going to drop the thing on their desks. Maybe they’ll release the extra content one day....