{"id":1333,"date":"2014-02-14T05:00:55","date_gmt":"2014-02-14T13:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/?p=1333"},"modified":"2014-02-13T21:16:40","modified_gmt":"2014-02-14T05:16:40","slug":"1333","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/writing\/1333\/","title":{"rendered":"“First Pass Pages” of Tiger Tail Soup"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tigers2\"<\/a>Tiger Tail Soup<\/em> is almost ready for publication.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Earlier this week my publisher sent me what they call “First Pass Pages.” That means that my novel is almost ready to be printed. All I have to do now is go through it one more time in case there’s something we missed–a typo or maybe a misplaced word. The expectation is that at this late date, problems will be few and far between. Almost nonexistent.<\/p>\n

So I sit down at my computer and read. Before long, I encounter problem number one. I want to rewrite. Even though the novel is finished and I’m satisfied with it, I see small changes I could make–a word here, a phrase there. But no, I tell myself. Stop fiddling with it.<\/p>\n

So I read on, and after a while I encounter problem number two. I become lost in my own story. Strange to say, even though I know the story well, it still pulls me in. I’m afraid I’m not watching closely enough for commas and typos. So I sit back, take a breath, and read that page again.<\/p>\n

It’s nighttime now, and I’ve read more than half the pages. When I finish, I’ll tell the publisher what I found. Then we’ll work together on the cover. Oh, my!<\/p>\n

Paintings in a trunk<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Before I even thought of writing Tiger Tail Soup<\/em>, I painted some pictures related to the story.<\/p>\n

At the top of the page you can see the painting that hangs in my dining room. It depicts a pair of tigers that wandered down from the mountains, swam across to Amoy, and were eventually killed and eaten–the choice cuts, by the Japanese soldiers who occupied Amoy; the leftovers, by the Chinese.<\/p>\n

But there were other painting I’d forgotten. I found them last week, rolled up in a trunk in my basement. Here are two of them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Ah<\/a>

Ah Chew eating tiger tail soup<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Ah<\/a>

Ah Chew with goats<\/p><\/div>\n

\"my<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tiger Tail Soup is almost ready for publication. Earlier this week my publisher sent me what they call “First Pass Pages.” That means that my novel is almost ready to be printed. All I have to do now is go through it one more time in case there’s something we missed–a typo or maybe a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43,13,4],"tags":[292,291,289,290,925],"class_list":["post-1333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-china","category-writing","tag-amoy-china","tag-chinese-brush-paintings","tag-first-pass-pages","tag-rewriting","tag-tiger-tail-soup"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s3Kn1e-1333","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4937,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/tiger-tail-soup\/translation-is-that-what-i-wrote\/","url_meta":{"origin":1333,"position":0},"title":"Translation: Is That What I Wrote?","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"April 10, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"My novel looks so different in translation. I look at all those Chinese characters and I wonder, is this really my novel? If only I could read Chinese! I did study it for a while. But that was years ago, and with the passage of time, the words just slipped\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "books"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"by Gracenotes","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/by-gracenotes-Wikipe-tan_shocked.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8292,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/tiger-tail-soup\/a-new-cover-for-tiger-tail-soup\/","url_meta":{"origin":1333,"position":1},"title":"A New Cover for Tiger Tail Soup","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"August 2, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"My novel, Tiger Tail Soup, was first published in 2014. (How time flies!) People bought it and read it and wrote reviews. And then--surprise, surprise--the publisher went out of business. What to do? I could do nothing and allow it to disappear from the marketplace. I could search for a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "books"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/IMG_2552-1-rotated-e1596057814667.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2264,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/tiger-tail-soup\/favorite-excerpts-from-author-part-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1333,"position":2},"title":"Some News about My Novel and More Short Excerpts","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"August 28, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Tiger Tail Soup: A novel of China at war by Nicki Chen For a long time I've been promising that Tiger Tail Soup would soon be available as an ebook. Now at last it is. For those of you who like to read on your Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "China"","block_context":{"text":"China","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/china\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"photo courtesy of Wootang01","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/3503514763_0b9ee8b500_n.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4412,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/tiger-tail-soup\/4412\/","url_meta":{"origin":1333,"position":3},"title":"Twelve Authors and Their Books","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"November 12, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Today I\u2019m teaming up with eleven other authors for an ebook sale. For the next ten days you\u2019ll be able to load up your Kindle, Nook, iPad or phone with some new reading material for less than you\u2019d spend on a trip to Starbucks. This is how it works. First\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "blogging"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"promobanner","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/promobanner.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/promobanner.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/promobanner.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/promobanner.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3155,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/tiger-tail-soup\/where-have-all-the-tigers-gone\/","url_meta":{"origin":1333,"position":4},"title":"Where Have All the Tigers Gone?","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"January 18, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"During the holidays my family\u2014seven adults, one child and a teenager\u2014visited the Indianapolis Zoo. Despite the unwieldy size of our group, we succeeded in staying together for a while. (The shark-petting pool with its small hint of danger appealed to us.) Before long, though, some of us rushed through the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "China"","block_context":{"text":"China","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/china\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"2014-12-23 tiger3","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/2014-12-23-tiger3-e1420585890529.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6732,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/writing\/reviews-of-tiger-tail-soup-are-still-coming-in\/","url_meta":{"origin":1333,"position":5},"title":"Book Reviews and Other Acts of Kindness","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"January 14, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"This week I had a group of writers over for a meeting. It was nice having them here. They brought food and flowers. They volunteered for upcoming projects. They sprinkled our time together with good will and all those small courtesies\u00a0 that help make our days together pleasant and productive.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "book reviews"","block_context":{"text":"book reviews","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/book-reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/EPIC2-e1515568932995.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1333"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1353,"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1333\/revisions\/1353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}