Progress Report 2025 Week 37

You know the saying that it takes a big man to admit when he’s made a mistake? Well, I must be huge, because I made a very big, very time-consuming mistake. It’s going to ripple through my entire work schedule for months. But it’s not all bad. There are a couple of things that can still move forward. But before we talk about that, let’s look at the key performance indicators (KPIs).

Last Week’s Progress By the Numbers

I’ve added a new key performance indicator: revision percentage of the whatever manuscript is being revised.

I’ll talk more about the reason I added revision percentage complete as one of the KPIs. For now, though there are two things to take away from this infographic:

1. I’m about 1/3 done revising Wayland’s Hammer Book 1: Point of Extraction
2. I still have not started writing Wayland’s Hammer Book 3: Lines of Operation

I’d really wanted to have started Lines of Operation. But there are a few things that I need to finish first. I’ll talk about most of them below. The outline also needs work. I want to utterly immerse myself in the characters before I run the outline through its final revision. I’m tired of that biting me in places I’d rather not be bitten. That’s one major lesson learned.

There’s another. Case in point…

Learning Has Occurred

Remember has I talked about how many typographic and similar errors I found in Dreams of Deucalion Book 1: Special Recon? I’m still contemplating what I want to do with audiobooks, and while I was experimenting with Amazon’s Virtual Voice, I had to listen to every page to catch mispronunciations. During that process, I found too many typographic errors — and I’ve already published that book.

I tracked those errors. A week or two ago, I updated Special Recon with all the corrections I found and published the ebook and paperback to Amazon. I’m now confident that the book’s in really good shape. While I’m glad I fixed the issues, I felt worried that the problem was more widespread.

Reviewing what had changed in my process, I realized I had tried to add efficiencies while writing Dreams of Deucalion. My hope was that the read-aloud phase could replace a dedicated revision pass. The Virtual Voice experience suggested this was not the case.

Well. This week, I began incorporating alpha reader feedback into Wayland’s Hammer Book 1: Point of Extraction. I wanted to experiment with technology to read it aloud — kind of like Virtual Voice but without having to either publish the book (which is the only way to get Virtual Voice to work) or pay for AI (e.g., using ElevenLabs). So, I tried the build-in functionality of MacOS called Speak Selection.

The good news is that it works. It works really, really well. I’ve finished revising Gerhard Wimmer’s arc in Point of Extraction. For the first time, I’m confident that it flows. The bad news is also ultimately good, but it’s really, really painful: my read-aloud pass missed a ton. It is, in effect, a failure. When I listen to MacOS read it back to me, I catch so much more. I think the reason is the same as why I can’t proofread my own work. My brain knows what’s coming, and I mentally correct without noticing. But when I hear Virtual Voice or MacOS read it back to me, I don’t have that translation layer active. A different part of my brain’s active.

I was amazed, and a little bummed, at how many more errors and abrasive phrasing I caught when MacOS or Virtual Voice read my material back to me. Paragraph by paragraph seems to give the best results.

Serious about Quality

I don’t know why the reader gave me a one-star rating for Special Recon. But there were enough errors to seriously dissatisfy someone. I also got a one-star on Dreams of Deucalion Book 3: Bait & Bleed. I think that book’s the best in the series; the one-star really disappointed me.

Are there a lot of errors in that book? I don’t know. But I’m going to find out. What I found in Point of Extraction (so far!) suggests that both Dreams of Deucalion Book 2: Flanking Maneuver and Bait & Bleed likely have an unacceptable number of errors. That’s just not cool.

I can’t deal with that. That’s not the kind of material I want to put in front of readers. The problem is that I really thought I’d made my process more efficient without degrading quality. I didn’t have enough checks in place to catch my error, at least until now. I have fixed Special Recon. Now, I’m going to fix the next two books. I’m not going to re-start the Facebook ads until I get the last two books fixed. I want readers to have the most positive experience possible.

I’m also halting any work on audiobook versions for Dreams of Deucalion until I fix the ebooks.

Going forward, instead of reading the material back to myself the next day after writing a chapter, I’m going to have MacOS read it back to me. I’m also going to add a second proofreader, at least for Wayland’s Hammer, to test the effectiveness of this change.

But until I get Dreams of Deucalion fixed, I’m only going to keep my Amazon ad running for it, and that at a reduced dollar amount. I need it to help me understand how to tune keyword ads for Dreams of Deucalion.

Progress against Last Week’s Goals

Here’s how I did against last week’s goals:

1. Continue revising Point of Extraction. Finish at least Wimmer’s and Lehner’s arcs, since they intertwine so much. Partial! I finished Wimmer’s arc. Lehner’s arc is next.
2. Learn how to bid Special Recon as an audio job with Royalty Sharing on ACX. Placed on hold. I need to ensure the last two books are ready for a new marketing push.
3. Revise the blurbs for Special Recon. Partial. I have published the revised blurbs for Special Recon and Flanking Maneuver. I’ll finish the third this week.
4. Create new marketing graphics for Special Recon. Placed on hold. I’ve begun experimenting with the processes (like Photoshop taking my covers apart and animating them), but I’m not going to push this until after I finish the revisions.
5. Process three more chapters of the audiobook version of Red Flag Warning. Done! I produced four more chapters. I want to keep that moving.
6. (Stretch objective): Begin a new Facebook ad with the updated graphics. Placed on hold.

Goals for the Week in Progress Report 2025 Week 37

Here’s what I hope to accomplish this week:

1. Produce four more audiobook chapters for The Sword of Sirius Book 1: Red Flag Warning.
2. Finish Moritz Lehner’s arc revisions in Point of Extraction.
3. Begin processing the Virtual Voice version of Dreams of Deucalion Book 2: Flanking Maneuver so I can potentially position it for an AI narrator release and enumerate errors. Process four chapters this week.

What Do You Think?

What kind of quality control do you have in your writing process? How many proofreaders do you hire? I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments!