Despite the sun’s attempts to send us all into a lethargic stupor, Laurel and I are working hard to maintain a sense of energy as deadlines quickly approach for The Wax Bullet War.

An official ISBN number has been assigned to both the print book and the e-book. We have also received the consolidated fact-checking document from our editing department; using their notes, we will decide what changes need to be made to the manuscript before we hand it over to the design department. From there, the design team will send out the call for an interior designer.

An extra element of the interior design that we’ll need to consider for The Wax Bullet War is what images to include in the book. Laurel and I are currently working with Sean to review several pieces of artwork composed by both Sean and his brother that can potentially be used in the book. Since art is such a large part of Sean’s memoir, we’d really love to include what we can. Sean also took a plethora of photos during his deployments, some of which we hope to incorporate into the final design of his novel as well.

Currently, Laurel and I are completing the tipsheet and back cover copy for the book. Once these write-ups are finished, we can share the necessary information with our design department so that the full exterior of the novel can be finalized. We has also started the process of requesting blurbs from the literary community.

This summer has presented interesting challenges surrounding the project management of The Wax Bullet War. The most pressing of these has been that neither Laurel nor I have been physically present at Ooligan’s base of operations. While many of the tasks that we do can be completed via the internet, the time lag associated with email requests can be trying at times—not to mention the stress of trying to align both of our schedules so that we can discuss the more pressing issues regarding the book’s production. However, Laurel’s summer internship and my summer job are both winding down this month, which means that September will be crunch time! During that time, we’ll be busy checking and re-checking that everything is correct and ready to go for our first round of meetings with Ingram Publisher Services.

The next update for The Wax Bullet War will be September 17. See you then!

- Whitney Smyth