Thursday Thoughts

The copyedited manuscript of Virgin is due back today. It's very difficult to try to read through something that I know has been altered when I can't tell who did it or why, but once I finally got a version that had the edits tracked and was able to correct and change it as I saw fit, I was much happier.

Unfortunately, in the course of the editing process, several discrepancies were created by the edits, and there were two other discrepancies that no one else spotted until I read through it myself.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that authors have the best knowledge of their stories, and when someone else takes it upon themselves to start messing with the content, mistakes will be made. It took me until Fugitive to convince my editors that the entire CSC series takes place within our own Milky Way galaxy and to get them to stop adding the word "intergalactic" in wherever they saw fit. In the Star Trek series and subsequent movies, the Enterprise never left our galaxy, and I hold firm in my belief that mankind will never venture that far into space. Reaching the next solar system will be difficult enough, which is why I set my series 1000 years in the future, and even that may not be enough time.

Speaking of time, when I entered Stud in my local RWA chapter's "members only" contest, one of the judges wondered what year the book was set in. Now, I realize that I've never used exact dates in any of my books, the reason being that our own planet cannot expect the entire galaxy to base its calendar on the birth of Christ. In Star Trek, they used stardates, but I've never been sure exactly what they were based on. However, having no point of reference other than our own, I came up with this timeline.

2964 Cat (hero of Slave) born
2972 Tarq (hero of Stud) born
2982 Dax (hero of Virgin) born
2984 Zetith destroyed
3004 Slave
3005 Warrior
3006 Rogue
3007 Outcast
3008 Fugitive
3009 Hero
3015 Virgin
3017 Stud

It's not terribly important, but may be an interesting bit of trivia for you CSC readers. I set the destruction of Zetith in 2984 as a sort of tribute to George Orwell's 1984, and went from there.

Okay, after all of that, I need a nice, hairy hunk.