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.

Your goals are making me feel inadequate

August 1st, 2008 | By Kelsey | No Comments »

Author Stephenie Meyer was interviewed in yesterday’s USA Today. Currently she is dominating the bestseller lists (3 of the 4 top spots on the USA Today’s top 100). In the interview they refer to her as the “next J.K. Rowling,” which is always an overstatement, but overstated time-and-time again, just like the “next Michael Jordan” is in basketball.

What she had to say about the overstatement: “There will never be another J.K. Rowling. That’s a lot of pressure on me, isn’t it? I’m just happy being Stephenie Meyer. That’s cool enough for me.”

Vince Carter, Kobe Bryant, Grant Hill, Tracy McGrady, and Lebron James all have said a similar version of that.

As fans we’re rarely satisfied with what we’ve got, so we always search for the second-coming of what we had.

That said, she is hugely successful, prolific, and writes about a subject near and dear to my heart – vampires. Her teen vampire series that features a love triangle made up of a teenage girl, her love interest a vampire, and a werewolf, at first thought, sounds somewhat familiar. Although, I don’t think her teenage protagonist is a butt-kicking vampire slayer.

Her plans for next year: “I’m just going to try and stay home and write five books next year.”

5 Books!

That’s why I would like to make the transition to writing fiction one of these days. Between the travel and research, it would be impossible for me to write 5 WAIW-like books in a year. From the outside, making stuff up seems much more efficient, or at the very least, less expensive.

Meyer’s latest book, Breaking Dawn is out tonight at midnight. You know you’ve made it big when stores stay open to midnight to sell your book.

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?

Woohoo!

July 16th, 2008 | By Kelsey | 3 Comments »

A Senator might be endorsing Where am I Wearing.

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.