The Olympics

August 8th, 2008 | By Kelsey | 3 Comments »

Why I’m excited –

The US Men’s Basketball team, “The Redeem Team,” is going to put the USA back where it belongs in international basketball competition.

My mom is close friends with the owner of DeVeau’s School of Gymnastics in Indianapolis, the home gym of Samantha Peszek. I’m not too manly to admit that I watch the women’s gymnastics. This year I’ll be watching a little more closely and following her progress on the school’s blog.

Why I’m nervous –

If the U.S. Men’s Basketball team ,“The Redeem Team,” loses, it will solidify our position of mediocrity in international basketball competition.

As of today, my book is pretty much set in stone. About 1/5th of the book takes place in China. I’m worried that over the next 10-days something will develop that dates what I’ve written. Never have so many foreign journalists been poking around, and it’s hard to say what they might turn out. For instance, if we discovered that half of China’s population were robots and my book doesn’t mention that, I might look a bit foolish. Nobody cares if a robot works twice as many hours as the government allows.

If you’re looking for a few good blogs written by westerners in China I’ve got some good ones.

China Hope Live

Here’s a sample of a 25-year old man from Tianjin in his own words:

Right now I care a lot about the Wenchuan, Sichuan great earthquake issue. …This is an extremely difficult and especially big affair. Everyone is paying close attention to the circumstances of the earthquake disaster area’s common people… Whoever has money sends money, whoever has strength sends strength, whoever has things sends things. This shows the united spirit of the Chinese people. ‘When one place has trouble, all places provide help’ (一方有难八方支援 / yī fāng yǒu nàn, bāfāng zhīyuán).

China holding the Olympics utilizes a lot of manpower and financial and physical resources. The Olympics doesn’t assist China’s common people very much. It mainly expresses China’s place in the world, by showing that China can run this Olympics well. The Chinese people are extremely concerned with this matter, however, heaven isn’t helping out (天公不做美 / tiān gōng bù zuò měi). Since the earthquake a lot of Chinese people have lost confidence regarding the Olympics. But I feel we ought to transform our sorrow into strength, and strive as much as possible to manage this Olympics well.

Blonde in Beijing

Jodi is from my hometown and she has some interesting insights about being a new mom in China and the conditions the Olympics will be taking place in.

…the air was as polluted as ever. And it was scorching hot at seven in the morning! I sure do feel for the Olympic athletes.

My book is for sale?

August 1st, 2008 | By Kelsey | 1 Comment »

Books-a-Million has three of my books for sale. I have no idea how or why. They are listed in their “hard-to-find inventory” section, which doesn’t make much sense, since the book hasn’t been published!

There are three copies total, and two of them are hardcover. When I first saw them I figured they were just advanced advanced readers copies that Wiley gave out at BookExpo America.

Either that or they are fully-edited and fact-checked copies from the future. If that’s the case, they are drastically underpriced.

Great publicity idea #1: Author shoplifts own book

July 31st, 2008 | By Kelsey | 3 Comments »

I was in the local Books-a-Million yesterday talking with the manager about setting up an event around the release of my book. I took in an advanced copy to reinforce that, yes, I had written a book, and here it is.

“Is it a print-on-demand book?” he asked, as he searched for it on his computer.

“No.” I never know how to respond to that. I mean it isn’t a POD, but, still, I kind of find that offensive. I don’t want to come across as if publishing by the POD method is beneath me, but what about me makes this fella, and a host of others that I’ve met, assume that a publisher wouldn’t have paid me to publish my work?

Is it the flip-flops?

Or, perhaps, my inability to pronounce the word worm? Although, I don’t think I used the word yesterday. Did I say, “Bookworms will love it?!”

Or, is it because I refuse to learn the difference between effect and affect? The a(e)ffects of worms on zombie brains is grossly under-studied?”

He looked the book up on the computer and seemed surprised that BAM would be getting it in. All I needed to do was contact him a few months before the Big Day – December 1 – and have them get in extra copies for the event.

I thanked him, and browsed a little before heading for the door with my advanced copy still in hand. I felt a bit awkward.

What if someone stopped me?

“Excuse me sir,” I imagined one of the booksellers would say. “Did you pay for that?”

Here’s the response I settled on, if asked: “This book cost me over 10 grand and two years of my life. Any chance I can return it?”

They didn’t ask.

But here’s a thought…

If an author shoplifted their own book, would that be good publicity? Or just stupid?

Any of you who are authors, give it a try and let me know.

The Mysteries of the copy edit

July 29th, 2008 | By Kelsey | No Comments »

I received the copy edit of my manuscript yesterday and quickly realized there’s no way I could be a copy editor.

The attention to detail is phenomenal, almost inhuman. Extra spaces are deleted, words that shouldn’t be capitalized are un-capitalized and ones that should be are, that’s and which’s are used properly, and a host of other grammatical and style issues are corrected. All of this hard work that will make me look much smarter than I am has been done by someone who has remained nameless to this point.

To that nameless someone…

“I’m sorry for all of the oversights. You must think I’m an idiot. Thanks for your hard work.”

The copy edit Style Sheet came with a Word List. I’m not exactly sure what the word list is, but I think that it is made up of words in the manuscript that can be styled in a number of different ways and terms that aren’t typically used like birdman and PO-ed. One thing I can’t quite figure out is that some of the words in the list are words that I don’t use in the book.

For example:

I don’t mention Warren Buffett (on the list) in the book, but I do write about Jimmy Buffett (not on the list).

(Note: My book will likely be found in the Business book section. The above sentence pretty much sums up what kind of business book it is.)

The word list and the copy editors are just two of the mysteries of the copy edit. I’ll be spending most of the next two weeks pouring through the edit, I’ll let you know if I come across any other mysteries.

Until then, here’s a list of the F-words found in the book and here’s a sentence using a few of them:

The Fed flip-flopped friggin’ French toast on Fantasy Island.

F
Fantasy Island
farang
Federal Reserve System, the Fed
feng shui
first-aid (adj), first aid (n)
firsthand
flat-screen TV
flip-flop
flowchart
follow-through (n); follow-through (adj)
follow-up (n); follow up (v)
footbed
foreign-invested firms
Foreword
Free Trade Union of the Workers of the Kingdom of Cambodia (FTUWKC)
French toast
friggin’
Frisbee
front-end loading

UPDATE: “Set up” is two words, not one, nor is it hyphenated
UPDATE: There’s no apostrophe in 1970s

The delicate art of “thank you”

July 21st, 2008 | By Kelsey | 5 Comments »

I’m writing my acknowledgments for the book.

Annie wants me to thank Oreo – the cat that owns me. But what if you think I owe you a “shout-out” and you turn to the acknowledgements expecting to read how you’ve inspired me only to find that I’ve thanked the cat and not you?

I’m proceeding with caution.

While I don’t want to leave anyone out, I also don’t want to thank everyone in my entire life that has helped me. Droning on name after name, thank-you after thank-you, could seem pathetic. It might be the only time I’ll ever have a chance to thank my childhood baby sitter in print, but I feel like I should act like it’s not. Like this is the first of many such opportunities. Let’s hope it is.

I’m trying to stick to the people that purely played a roll in the story of my book – inspired it, informed it, gave life to it, participated in it, believed in it, or put up with me in the research and writing of it.

Who knows, you might make the list? The readers of WAIW? have been many of the above. There’s one way to ensure that you’ll make the cut – bribe me.

(Note: I’m kidding. Please don’t send me money.)

For $100 I’ll thank you for your help with the manuscript.
For $500 I’ll mention that your guidance was invaluable and your wisdom vast.
For the bargain price of $1,000 I’ll call you my muse.
For $50,000 I’ll make you a co-author.

Have any other suggestions of ways to be mentioned in the acknowledgements and the price tag that should accompany it?

Blurb quest

July 10th, 2008 | By Kelsey | No Comments »

I’m a week away from having to turn in my blurbs. A blurb is that endorsement on the back cover or (in the case of one provided by someone Big Time) on the front cover, which an author or authority writes praising a book.

So far, I have one. But it’s one that I’m very pleased to have.

John Bowe author of Nobodies was kind enough to give WAIW? a read and offer up several different endorsements for me to choose from. Alas, none of them say that my book changed his world or that it was the best book ever written, but they are much more sincere. It is obvious that John read the book, thought about it, and gave his genuine opinion on what he liked about it.

Personally, I would be more interested to know what he didn’t like about it. At this point in my writing career I’m much more into criticism than praise. Although, I suppose that anti-blurbs wouldn’t play well on the cover of a book: “Timmerman will likely never progress much beyond underwear journalism. But I guess the book was okay.”

The same goes for my shopping habits on Amazon. I skip right past the 5-star reviews – likely the reviews from the author’s friends and family anyhow – and go straight for the 1-stars. I look for reasons not to buy a book. I’m glass-half-empty that way.

I was at a writer’s conference once where a fella who was both an author and an agent said that he often wrote the blurbs himself and then sent them to people for approval. This way the blurber didn’t even have to read the work or take the time to write a few sentences about a book they probably didn’t read anyhow.

I’m not sure how much stock I put in blurbs before, but after that it dropped considerably.

John’s well thought out blurb has somewhat renewed my faith in the practice. I hope someday someone asks me to blurb their book so I can return the favor.

You pick the author’s pic

June 29th, 2008 | By Kelsey | 15 Comments »

Annie and I had a little photo shoot in our backyard today. I’m sure it’ll give the neighbors something to talk about. Anyhow, I need to supply my publisher with an author’s pic and I’m reaching out for a little help.

Vote and let me know which shot we should use for the book - or if you think I look like Quasimodo with my crooked smile in all of them, tell me that too.

Here are our four picks:

#1

#2

#3

#4

A kind of preview…

June 22nd, 2008 | By Kelsey | 2 Comments »

I pasted the Prologue and Chapter 1 of Where am I Wearing? into Wordle and here’s the cloud it produced.

See the larger version HERE.

Wordle in its own words:

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

I learned about Wordle on John Scalzi’s Whatever.

Is my ARC showing?

June 17th, 2008 | By Kelsey | No Comments »

An Advanced Reader’s Copy (ARC) is a pre-publication paperback edition of a book meant to be used for early promotion and soliciting endorsements.

My ARC is a little more “advanced” than most, I think. I found Michael Chabon’s ARC for Summerland in a used book store (btw - it’s illegal to sell them) and it was darn near spit-shined. My ARC is far from it. I still have notes to myself in it and have made hours and hours of changes since it was published.

Seeing my ARC is kinda like seeing me with my pants down; it’s a little embarrassing. My manuscript was converted into an ARC earlier than normal because Wiley wanted to take WAIW? to BookExpo America in LA the first week of June and I still had a rough draft in May. They gave away 200 copies (is my face turning red). One “advanced reader” had this to say:

“I was given an advanced copy of your book and I Love it. I am also obsessed with reading the labels on my clothing. Now I’m wondering about the little piece of paper in the pocket of my jeans that says, Inspected by # 34.”

Ah, shucks.

Anyhow, I’ve got several ARC’s left and will probably have another pre-publication contest in the near future to win one.

If you win it keep this in mind: Just as some people are growers, not showers, others are re-writers not first-drafters.

13 fellas

June 12th, 2008 | By Kelsey | 16 Comments »

I officially turned in my manuscript to Wiley yesterday. Woohoo! One of my editors, Tiffany, laid out the remaining path to publication.

First it’s off to production where someone will read over the manuscript looking for excessive vulgarity or endorsements of Hitler. Once it passes that it heads to a copyeditor who will edit punctuation, grammar, and style.

It was in her explanation of copyediting that Tiffany paid me the best compliment I’ve had as a writer, “We’ll send notes to the copyeditor telling them to preserve your style. We’ll tell him to keep all the fellas.”

There are two reasons why this was such a big compliment:

1) I’m honored to have a style that someone feels is worth preserving.

2) I’m really happy the fellas won’t be going anywhere because fella just might be my favorite word. In fact, at the most recent writer’s conference I attended, a fellow attendee wanted to talk craft. They went into great detail about their influences and their genius of melding styles – somehow managing to take all of the good stuff from the greatest writers of our time and none of the bad. They went on for about 10 minutes. When they felt they had sufficiently hashed out the depth of their style’s glory they asked me about mine. My response: “I like to use the word fella.” After their craptastic craft spiel, I couldn’t muster up anything else.

Out of my manuscripts 68,792 words I use 13 fellas. Allow me to introduce you:

1) more of a Warner Bros. fella
2) A fella sat on the maroon couch
3) A new fella has taken a seat
4) this poor fella lost his business
5) a short Kiwi fella
6) this fella vigorously scribbles
7) pretty jovial fellas
8) one fella is in shorts
9) a fella named Brice
10) a muscular fella with grey stubble
11) two fellas that couldn’t be more different
12) a fella obsessively moving at random from rack to rack checking out women’s clothes
13) the fella who watched the demolition

I’m 4 of the 13 fellas. Any guesses as to which 4? An Advanced Reader Copy of the book to anyone that gets them first try.