This photo and the following review landed in my inbox, from someone calling hirself “The Porg Apprentice” (or “Poppy Bunsen”). Seriously.
The meeting of the Porg Book Club is called to order!
Ingrid: “Today we are discussing The Reefs of Time, a new book by Jeffrey A. Carver. It is the story of friends who work together and make a good team. In previous episodes, I mean, books, they have saved the Earth and other planets from being wiped out by meteors and evil civilizations that try to reprogram people’s minds with nanotechnology. In this book, the friends are split up to fight the nanobots, which are trying to infect hyperspace. I liked it. I finished it in a weekend. What did you think?”
Sherie: “I liked the theme that friends can become found family. It reminded me of the Rebels and the Resistance who are a team that become family, and how sad they were when they were split up after Hoth and Crait. But they still had hope.”
George: “I thought it was funny that the people in the retro 1950s spaceship were somebody else’s UFO on a different planet!”
Lucky: “Because my friend Tag will ask, there are no porgs in this book.”
Snowy: “But there is a cat that exists in different dimensions! I wonder if Loth-cats and gokats can learn from each other?”
Sherie: “I liked that this book can stand alone, and I didn’t have to read the other books to understand this one. I missed the last book because I had a nest of porglets to take care of.”
Ingrid: “So I think we’re agreed, two wings up?”
Lucky: “Yes! Two wings up! You can find it on pretty much any bookseller, or ask your librarian nicely to order it from Ingram. They’ll know what that means.”
![Drum roll, please! The End Times have arrived! The End Times! The End of waiting for me to finish The Reefs of Time. Yes, I have reached the end! The Reefs of Time is substantially DONE. That’s right—I’ve finished the major rewrite of the 268,000 word manuscript! Most of those words, I now believe, are the right words, and in the right order. That works out to about 1326 manuscript pages in Courier New, with two spaces after many periods, and one space after others, because habits die hard. Ten years in the works, this novel has been through the fermenter, the extractor, the refractors, the distillers, the boilers, the oven, and aged in camphor-wood in the cellar. Here’s what the manuscript looks like, with its tired but happy progenitor. [CUE “cheers” and more “cheers,” and maybe a few “huzzahs”!] “But wait!” you say. “Is that some kind of weasel wording, ‘substantially done’? What are you trying to pull here?” Trust me, I’m not trying to pull anything. Over the next week or so, I’ll be cleaning up some edits I’ve made notes to myself about, and responding to final suggestions from my stalwart (if annoyingly discerning) writing group. And then off it goes to the editor. The editor will edit, and I’ll do a polish pass over the whole thing as I respond to his editorial suggestions. And after that? Why, you get to read it! At last, at long last!](https://i0.wp.com/www.starrigger.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/JC-Reefs-final-ms-5-19-18-elbow-smile_sm.jpg?resize=500%2C375&ssl=1)
Or in the case of this book, too much time. For you to be waiting, that is.