I figured this little ordeal deserved a mention.

When I finally got Divine Avenger printed for the first time (Dec 28 2011), I thought I’d killed most of the mistakes. I mean, I’d spent more than three months at it (principle editing was done done in October, but I kept at it ‘till late late Jan.) checking out for typos and the like. But it turns out I hadn’t.

Mid October, I had this… odd glitch happen where I lost all the apostrophes in the entire document. Permanently. Like bam, out of no where. At first, I thought it was just a word or two, but then I realized it was the entire final document. ‘Ah, that should be easy,’ I told myself. ‘I just have to use the original chapter files and—’

That’s when I remembered that some original chapter were VASTLY different to the final product’s. “Why change them directly when I can keep them in their imperfect forms as mementos? I’ll just edit them on this document,” I’d told myself.

To quote Benjamin ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw, “As the exasperated Chinese zookeeper said to the last male panda on the face of the Earth, ‘FUCK THAT!’”

Eventually I pulled through and after what seemed like an eternity, I got most of them. And so it was published on Jan 30 2012.

But my troubles weren’t over. My friends who bought the first edition mentioned missing apostrophes (thankfully not spelling mistakes, just that). I figured, one or two wouldn’t kill me; hell maybe no one else had noticed them. But I still went back from time to time and fixed things myself; I’d rather not take any chances whatsoever. I did that at least three times. But two weeks ago (April 4 2012, to be precise), I decided to reread the entire thing from start to finish (after for the past times simply nitpicking specific chapters -.-)

That was horrendous. So many missing apostrophes! Broken sentences! Etc! —__—

I could’ve jeopardized my entire possible writing career!

So through the course of a week, I went back and re-read it from top to bottom. I spared nothing. I did my fair share of trimming along with the rewording (536 pages were cut down to 520; no loss in content, just some rewording), but JESUS H. CHRIST that was troublesome!

But it was worth it! 

So as of today, I can safely say that all (or at the very least 90%) of all mistakes have been completely, and utterly, DESTROYED. Like deleted from the space-time continuum destroyed.

Which reminds me, as I was reading through my chapters, I found this one interesting line coming from Samael. “Act in haste, repent in leisure,” (hence the title).

I was like, “thank you, past me, for your foresight, and thank you, present me, for your hindsight.” (Sight-ception).

So, I’m not a mind-reader, but I know that sometimes some readers are interested in writing. My suggestions for you all?

1) Download this program, Scrivener. It really helped me sort out through my chapters and helped me organize myself a lot more; plus with the amazon plug-in, you can export your writing to .mobi (kindle format). Just be aware that you gotta buy it.

2) There’s no such thing as too much proofreading. I know; DA was at first 555 pages, then 536 (to those of you who own them, you can call ‘em collector’s editions, maybe?) and now 520. Trimming isn’t a bad idea; sometimes you can save yourself a lot of space with it. But it also helps out to weed out every mistake you make. And the less typos you have, the more people will go, “Omg, he’z such a goooooood writer i luvz him lolz! <3” A solid fanbase (like the one i’m still trying to build) will get you places.

3) Ignore all outside influences. I remember having some very important people in my life go, “when are you publishing it?” or, “gotta send it soon or they’ll drop you,” etc. Ignore them, seriously. Otherwise, you’ll end up rushing it, and you’ll have to go through my same predicament. Sounds fun, right?

Well, thank you for paying attention. Remember to subscribe.

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On a side note, Divine Centurion (an interquel) is already complete, and Divine Retribution is 5/32 (or 40?) chapters in. Excited anyone?