Showing posts with label collaborating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label collaborating. Show all posts
Monday, 5 November 2012
Premature Delivery!
By Erin Cashman
I began my writing career in elementary school, always jotting down stories and poems. It has always been my dream to be an author, but my father encouraged me to go to law school, so that I could support myself. I took his advice, and stopped writing anything except legal briefs and memos for several years. And then one night I had the strangest dream about a family of vampires. I just had to write it down. I finished it a year later, and sent it off to agents and publishers, certain I would realize my dream and become an author. Boy was I wrong. After Twilight, romance vampire stories were in demand, not middle-grade adventure ones. And then I wrote another middle grade adventure novel, about a long lost Irish treasure. This one would certainly be published, I thought. Wrong again. And then I wrote The Exceptionals. I sent it out to only ten people; pretty certain it would not be published. A few weeks later I had an agent and a publisher, both from those ten letters! So after years of writing, and two novels behind me, I was finally going to be a published author. Third time was a charm! I was elated.
Two years and several drafts later, my novel was finally finished. April 1, 2012 was the publication date. (The fact that it was April Fools Day should have been a warning!) In December I received my advanced reader copy in the mail. And then I realized I better get on facebook (I know, about a year later than I should have!) and create a website. I contacted bloggers and offered an advanced reader copy of The Exceptionals for their giveaways. I scheduled a pre-publication blog tour, and had a strategy in place -- for the next two months I was going to do everything within my power to get The Exceptionals as much pre-release publicity as I could. Soon The Exceptionals was available online for pre-order, and all of my friends did just that. This was really happening!
Bursting with excitement, I painstakingly planned my release day. A fabulous independent bookstore offered to host a release party on April 1. A friend offered to make hawk shaped cookies (after Ferana, an important character from the book). Following that would be a nice dinner with my family. It was going to a perfect day. On February 1, I was at work doing some legal research when I received about a dozen emails from friends and family. Their copy of the The Exceptionals had shipped! That just couldn’t be, I thought, it won’t be available until April 1. I had two months to get ready for the release, two months I needed to help promote the book!
Frantic, I emailed the only other author I had ever been in contact with, Julie Wu, who had already been very generous with her time and advice. She quickly emailed her author group – Book Pregnant – on my behalf. Had anyone heard of this? No. The next day my agent called and delivered the news: nothing could be done. The book was now available.
What did I do? I cried and felt so sorry for myself. But the next day I woke up and thought, Right now I am officially a published author. It may not have happened how I had planned, but I had realized my dream, and I should be thrilled. For years and years I worked hard, on three different novels, and I was so fortunate to finally be published. And then I met Julie for lunch, and she invited me to join Book Pregnant. I did, and immediately I was flooded with congratulations and well wishes on my release. It’s hard to believe it was only nine months ago, because the authors of book pregnant have become very important to me. It’s such a supportive community. We share each other’s successes, but more importantly, the disappointments.
Authors don’t control very much. They don’t pick their release date, they certainly can’t control what reviewers write, or what readers think. Often, authors don’t have control over their covers – sometimes even their titles! They work tirelessly on their manuscripts, edit again and again, and then, if they are very lucky, one day hold their published book in their hands. And then it’s up to everyone else to decide if it’s good or bad, worth reading or not. As exhilarating as it is to see your book in print, it’s scary, too. First time authors often have many questions (me more than most!), some highs and plenty of lows. Having others to ask questions to, go to for advice, vent – and know that no matter what, they are always in your corner, has been a blessing.
So in retrospect, I am glad that I debuted two months early. If I hadn’t, I probably would not be in Book Pregnant. I may have lost out on some pre-publicity buzz, but what I gained is far more important.
Wednesday, 8 August 2012
Dancing Naked in the Cemetery: When Fiction is Perceived as Fact
I have the unique joy of being able to trace my family heritage back to the early 1700s. The tomb stones of many of those relatives are placed behind an historical country church established in 1759 less than two miles from where I live today. Consequently, I’m not just talking about tracing on a genealogical site, I’m talking about walking up to their grave and saying out loud… “See here, right here I stand. The fruit of your loins 200 years down the road, and counting.” Fortunately, I have a family that not only remained local, but also believed in education and schooled their children to write extensively. It’s in my genes. As icing on the cake, someone had enough insight to save their letters and pack them in a crate for me to open 150 years later. Those letters have been great fodder for my imagination.
Imagination is the key word here. Predominantly, I write fiction, so I juice things up a bit. I play around with names and take a bit of one person’s history to combine with another. I create places of intrigue and there’s nothing more fun than ghosts and spirits and sounds in the night. To put all of that in a grave yard, well, the combination is irresistible.
Herein lies the problem. The embellishment of these stories by me and others over the years has become viral, and with the onslaught of tweet and twitter and all these nasty little messenger devices, the church sees more action at night than during the day. The congregation only meets every other week for one hour. The cemetery is busy from midnight to dawn. Our surveillance cameras caught a bevy of not-so-tantalizing beauties dancing in the nude last weekend. It was hard to identify them because they didn’t have any clothes on but their bare breasted frolic would have been more pleasing had more been hidden. Just my personal opinion, of course.
Do I care? I didn’t used to. Get your jollies by tiptoeing around graves under a full moon or pretending that some ghost appears to reclaim his golden arm at the stroke of midnight. What I care about is that frivolity is turning more often to vandalism and we pick up beer cans, liquor bottles and broken glass on a regular basis. Our “no trespassing after dark” signs are ignored and the security camera and lights are destroyed. Recently, church windows were broken. Last night I ventured out and confronted six more young people at midnight. Really, midnight is long past my bedtime. I don’t like doing this, but I’m afraid we’re going to have to start prosecuting for trespassing in order to close the flood gates. And yes, we already have a gate that stops no one.
I write this because this senseless destruction has made me rethink my own writing. What have I written that people actually believe is true? I used to think that was the height of a good writer, to be so convincing that your reader confused fiction with reality. I’m having second thoughts, especially now that tweeting appears to be able to broadcast tidbits of misinformation to thousands within seconds, without anyone having read the book.
I’m open for suggestions.
Tuesday, 8 May 2012
The Importance of Literacy in My Life, and Yours
by Wiley Cash
I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood called Forest Brook in Gastonia, North Carolina. Forest Brook was everything a kid could want in a neighborhood; it was full of both forests and brooks, and even now when I whisper the name, I feel just as much mystery and excitement as I did when I was ten years old. My younger brother and I spent our childhoods riding our bikes on dirt paths, wading through creeks, climbing up trees, and performing all the dangerous feats boys attempt when they grow up in a neighborhood like ours. Even though we spent a lot of time playing outside, we spent just as much time reading and being read to by our mom.
My parents’ second story bedroom windows looked out over an expanse of field behind our house. Dense woods bordered the field on either side. At that time, if you would’ve walked through the field for about two miles you would’ve eventually found yourself in a nice, upper-class neighborhood with a country club where my brother and I would eventually work as lifeguards. Just past the golf course that ringed the club was a tiny municipal airport with a beacon light that could be seen from my parents’ bedroom windows.
At night, after we’d taken our baths and before we’d said our prayers, my brother and I would sit in our mom’s lap in an old wicker rocking chair while she read to us. This ritual probably started when I was around three years old, and I would guess that I climbed down out of that rocking chair for the last time when I was six – only because I was too big to be rocked without my feet touching the floor, not because I no longer wanted my mom to read to me. After that I’d sit on my parents’ bed and listen while my mom read out loud and rocked my brother, who would climb down from that chair for the final time just a few years after me and join me on the bed, our mom still in the rocker, reading to us.
Those are very comforting memories: the sound of my mother’s voice close to my ear while she rocked me when I was small or drifting across the room to where I sat on the bed once I was older; the smell of Dial soap on my clean skin and the scent of the summer-warmed window panes as they cooled against the night air; the sound of chirping crickets lifting from the field behind our house. I remember these things as if they still take place each night; in my mind, maybe they do. I also have a clear memory of staring out the window and watching the beacon light at the airport as it revolved atop the tower, its beam strafing the field behind our house with a faint glow before disappearing, only to reappear seconds later. The beacon light was hypnotic; it lulled me to sleep more than the crickets or the rocking or the sound of my mom’s voice as it grew quieter and quieter while our eyelids grew heavier.
When I was twenty, my parents left our home in Gastonia and moved to the beach at Oak Island, North Carolina, roughly five hours east of where I’d grown up. A bridge connects Oak Island to the mainland, and from the bridge you can see the Caswell Beach lighthouse at the eastern end of the island. Not long after they’d moved, I was crossing the bridge with my mom at dusk; the lighthouse’s beam was just barely visible against the darkening sky. My mom looked at the lighthouse, and then she turned and looked at me.
“Just think,” she said, “whenever you see the lighthouse, you’ll know you’re almost home.”
I knew what she meant, and I appreciated the sentiment, but I knew that I’d never think of Oak Island as home, regardless of its beauty or the beauty of its landmarks. I still think of home as being farther west in North Carolina, at the edge of a little field in a neighborhood dotted with forests and brooks where a beacon light shines through the bedroom window while my mother reads stories to my brother and me.
Whenever I read, I may not always recall the sound of my mother’s voice or the sensation of being rocked, but I always feel the same safety and comfort I felt as a young boy watching the night creep across the field toward our house while the warm breeze rolled through the window screens. I can’t imagine a life that doesn’t include reading.
Even with that said, it’s amazing how often I take my literacy for granted, especially in my day-to-day life at the grocery store where I read labels on products, at the pharmacy where I read warnings on medicine, and at the doctor’s office where I read pamphlets and information about what may or may not be ailing me. I tend to think of my reading life as something I nurture in private, something I use to escape. But I’d be wrong to think of it this way; reading is something I use to survive, and if you’re reading this now, then you use reading to survive as well.
As an author who’s just published my first novel, I’m aware that reading has given me a job. But as an adult who uses my literacy each and every day, I’m aware that reading has given me the ability to thrive in a very complicated world. A 2003 federal study found that one in seven adults don’t possess the literacy skills to read beyond the level required of a children’s picture book. I can’t fathom the fact that so many people have never had the pleasure of opening a novel and escaping their everyday lives. Even more daunting and sobering is the reality that these people’s everyday lives are complicated by illiteracy; tasks that we take for granted – going to the grocery store, buying a plane ticket, writing a letter of complaint – are endlessly and unnecessarily complicated.
My wife and I spent the past few months searching for a way to give back to a reading community that has allowed my dream of being a published author to come true. The answer became clear one day after I opened UNCA Today, the alumni magazine of the University of North Carolina at Asheville. The magazine had profiled Amanda Edwards, a woman who’d been a good friend of mine while we were students at UNCA. Amanda is the Executive Director of the Literacy Council of Buncombe County in Asheville, North Carolina. I read the profile on Amanda, and then I called her about ways my wife and I could contribute to the amazing work the council is doing in Buncombe County. I began researching literacy programs throughout North and South Carolina, and I was shocked by what I discovered. According to the 2003 study, in North Carolina 14% of adults struggle with basic reading skills; the rate climbs slightly to 15% in South Carolina. On the bright side, I discovered that in many cities it costs as little as $25 to buy the materials that will teach an adult how to read. I can’t imagine a better investment in the future of an individual, a community, or a city. Think about what $50 or $100 could do for men and women in your community; then think about what $1,000 could do. With that in mind, my wife and I have decided that we want to raise thousands of dollars for literacy projects and public libraries throughout North and South Carolina, but we need your help.
Beginning on May 14, my publisher, William Morrow, is sending me on a fifteen-city tour throughout North and South Carolina where I’ll be holding events at some of the finest independent bookstores in the country. At almost all of these events, my wife and I will be donating a portion of the proceeds from book sales to local literacy projects and public libraries, and we’ll be encouraging booksellers and the public to give what they can as well. I’m proud that we’ll be partnering with the Literacy Council of Buncombe County, the group that inspired this idea, and I’m especially proud that we’ll be partnering with the Gaston County Public Library in Gastonia, North Carolina, where I received my first library card on the day I turned six.
I can never repay the gift the reading community has given me – for the memories of those nights in my parents’ bedroom when my mom read to us, for the times in my life that were so hectic or horrible that reading was the only thing I could do to escape – but this is a start.
If you’re interested in stopping by one of our events or learning more about the organizations we’re working with, please check out the tour schedule here. If you can’t come to an event, but you’d like to make a donation, please feel free to contact any of these organizations listed here or the literacy council or public library in your community.
In the meantime, read to your kids, read to other people’s kids, and, if you don’t think you’re too old to enjoy it, have someone read to you. It’s up to them whether or not they want to rock you to sleep while they do it.
I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood called Forest Brook in Gastonia, North Carolina. Forest Brook was everything a kid could want in a neighborhood; it was full of both forests and brooks, and even now when I whisper the name, I feel just as much mystery and excitement as I did when I was ten years old. My younger brother and I spent our childhoods riding our bikes on dirt paths, wading through creeks, climbing up trees, and performing all the dangerous feats boys attempt when they grow up in a neighborhood like ours. Even though we spent a lot of time playing outside, we spent just as much time reading and being read to by our mom.
My parents’ second story bedroom windows looked out over an expanse of field behind our house. Dense woods bordered the field on either side. At that time, if you would’ve walked through the field for about two miles you would’ve eventually found yourself in a nice, upper-class neighborhood with a country club where my brother and I would eventually work as lifeguards. Just past the golf course that ringed the club was a tiny municipal airport with a beacon light that could be seen from my parents’ bedroom windows.
At night, after we’d taken our baths and before we’d said our prayers, my brother and I would sit in our mom’s lap in an old wicker rocking chair while she read to us. This ritual probably started when I was around three years old, and I would guess that I climbed down out of that rocking chair for the last time when I was six – only because I was too big to be rocked without my feet touching the floor, not because I no longer wanted my mom to read to me. After that I’d sit on my parents’ bed and listen while my mom read out loud and rocked my brother, who would climb down from that chair for the final time just a few years after me and join me on the bed, our mom still in the rocker, reading to us.
Those are very comforting memories: the sound of my mother’s voice close to my ear while she rocked me when I was small or drifting across the room to where I sat on the bed once I was older; the smell of Dial soap on my clean skin and the scent of the summer-warmed window panes as they cooled against the night air; the sound of chirping crickets lifting from the field behind our house. I remember these things as if they still take place each night; in my mind, maybe they do. I also have a clear memory of staring out the window and watching the beacon light at the airport as it revolved atop the tower, its beam strafing the field behind our house with a faint glow before disappearing, only to reappear seconds later. The beacon light was hypnotic; it lulled me to sleep more than the crickets or the rocking or the sound of my mom’s voice as it grew quieter and quieter while our eyelids grew heavier.
When I was twenty, my parents left our home in Gastonia and moved to the beach at Oak Island, North Carolina, roughly five hours east of where I’d grown up. A bridge connects Oak Island to the mainland, and from the bridge you can see the Caswell Beach lighthouse at the eastern end of the island. Not long after they’d moved, I was crossing the bridge with my mom at dusk; the lighthouse’s beam was just barely visible against the darkening sky. My mom looked at the lighthouse, and then she turned and looked at me.
“Just think,” she said, “whenever you see the lighthouse, you’ll know you’re almost home.”
I knew what she meant, and I appreciated the sentiment, but I knew that I’d never think of Oak Island as home, regardless of its beauty or the beauty of its landmarks. I still think of home as being farther west in North Carolina, at the edge of a little field in a neighborhood dotted with forests and brooks where a beacon light shines through the bedroom window while my mother reads stories to my brother and me.
Whenever I read, I may not always recall the sound of my mother’s voice or the sensation of being rocked, but I always feel the same safety and comfort I felt as a young boy watching the night creep across the field toward our house while the warm breeze rolled through the window screens. I can’t imagine a life that doesn’t include reading.
Even with that said, it’s amazing how often I take my literacy for granted, especially in my day-to-day life at the grocery store where I read labels on products, at the pharmacy where I read warnings on medicine, and at the doctor’s office where I read pamphlets and information about what may or may not be ailing me. I tend to think of my reading life as something I nurture in private, something I use to escape. But I’d be wrong to think of it this way; reading is something I use to survive, and if you’re reading this now, then you use reading to survive as well.
As an author who’s just published my first novel, I’m aware that reading has given me a job. But as an adult who uses my literacy each and every day, I’m aware that reading has given me the ability to thrive in a very complicated world. A 2003 federal study found that one in seven adults don’t possess the literacy skills to read beyond the level required of a children’s picture book. I can’t fathom the fact that so many people have never had the pleasure of opening a novel and escaping their everyday lives. Even more daunting and sobering is the reality that these people’s everyday lives are complicated by illiteracy; tasks that we take for granted – going to the grocery store, buying a plane ticket, writing a letter of complaint – are endlessly and unnecessarily complicated.
My wife and I spent the past few months searching for a way to give back to a reading community that has allowed my dream of being a published author to come true. The answer became clear one day after I opened UNCA Today, the alumni magazine of the University of North Carolina at Asheville. The magazine had profiled Amanda Edwards, a woman who’d been a good friend of mine while we were students at UNCA. Amanda is the Executive Director of the Literacy Council of Buncombe County in Asheville, North Carolina. I read the profile on Amanda, and then I called her about ways my wife and I could contribute to the amazing work the council is doing in Buncombe County. I began researching literacy programs throughout North and South Carolina, and I was shocked by what I discovered. According to the 2003 study, in North Carolina 14% of adults struggle with basic reading skills; the rate climbs slightly to 15% in South Carolina. On the bright side, I discovered that in many cities it costs as little as $25 to buy the materials that will teach an adult how to read. I can’t imagine a better investment in the future of an individual, a community, or a city. Think about what $50 or $100 could do for men and women in your community; then think about what $1,000 could do. With that in mind, my wife and I have decided that we want to raise thousands of dollars for literacy projects and public libraries throughout North and South Carolina, but we need your help.
Beginning on May 14, my publisher, William Morrow, is sending me on a fifteen-city tour throughout North and South Carolina where I’ll be holding events at some of the finest independent bookstores in the country. At almost all of these events, my wife and I will be donating a portion of the proceeds from book sales to local literacy projects and public libraries, and we’ll be encouraging booksellers and the public to give what they can as well. I’m proud that we’ll be partnering with the Literacy Council of Buncombe County, the group that inspired this idea, and I’m especially proud that we’ll be partnering with the Gaston County Public Library in Gastonia, North Carolina, where I received my first library card on the day I turned six.
If you’re interested in stopping by one of our events or learning more about the organizations we’re working with, please check out the tour schedule here. If you can’t come to an event, but you’d like to make a donation, please feel free to contact any of these organizations listed here or the literacy council or public library in your community.
In the meantime, read to your kids, read to other people’s kids, and, if you don’t think you’re too old to enjoy it, have someone read to you. It’s up to them whether or not they want to rock you to sleep while they do it.
Friday, 2 March 2012
Don't Be a Helicopter Parent -- Letting Go to Help Your Book-Baby Grow
by Sophie PerinotOur books are our babies. They’ve kept us up nights, and acted badly in front of company (like those agents we queried too early), but we love them to death and we are very, very possessive of them. And, like most parents, we have high hopes for them. We want them to go on to big things – big sales, good reviews, dates with all the best book clubs.
Sometimes the “possessive” author part of us and the part that wants what’s best for our books are in direct conflict. What do I mean? Have you heard of the “helicopter parent?” I would argue the “helicopter author” also exists—she’s in all of us (guys, you can read “he’s” if it makes you feel better) and if we don’t keep her under control our book will suffer.
Repeat after me – “I am a wordsmith, I write, I write really well. But it takes a lot more than writing to make a book a success—it takes a village (it’s okay, you can steal that phrase from Hillary Clinton, everyone else has). Once I have a publisher I will let the professionals who work there do their jobs.”
That’s precisely what I told myself immediately after I signed the contract for my debut novel (The Sister Queens). Despite being type-A, I decided to make a conscious effort right from the first trimester not to micromanage every step on the publication trail, and not to freak out when I discovered that I didn’t have the political capital to do so anyway. Only a few days before my due date (launch), I am pretty proud of myself. I think I lived up to my pledge not to helicopter parent, and I am going to share the secrets to my tongue-biting success.
Keep your eye on the BIG picture – book sales. I want to sell books. My publisher wants to sell books. We all want to sell my book to people who are not ourselves (and not our friends and family for that matter). So what we like—in terms of a cover, or a title or blog-ad copy, etc—runs a distant second to what a majority of book-buying, cash-carrying potential readers will like.
And the truth is, authors (especially debut authors) may not be in a position to predict what will catch the eye of the average book buyer. I am not trained to do that (nor have I conducted studies or otherwise made it my business to keep my fingers on the pulse of such things) and you probably aren't either. Which leads to my next point.
Remind yourself as often as necessary, that years of experience and professional training DO count for something. Publishing is a competitive industry. The folks our publishers hired didn’t just walk off the street and say “this looks better than working at McDonalds.” They are professionals. The marketing and art department folks are trained to know what gets a book picked up off a “new releases” table. They have been designing covers and brainstorming titles for years. With this in mind, I decided, even as I was offering my own cover ideas (as my editor asked me to) I would stop well short of trying to “direct the brush” of the cover artists and I would accept that they might know best.
Similarly, my editor has been polishing manuscripts since well before I thought of writing them. So, when I received my editorial suggestions back in the second trimester, instead of growling “my baby is perfect as I wrote it,” I consciously adopted a listening frame of mind, and seriously considered every suggestion. My editor gave me the gift of “outside eyes” and not just any old eyes, veteran eyes.
Was ceding some portion of control over a novel I’d lived with and loved easy – not all the time. Did I take every suggestion my editor made – no (ultimately it’s my name on the cover). But neither did I assume I knew best (or if I did assume that for some, giddy, amount of time – I made sure not to email my editor until the feeling passed).
Bottom line: I wanted a deal with a major publisher precisely so that I could tap into the resources and experience of “the best.” Disregarding the type of accumulated expertise my publisher had to offer would have been stupid and stubborn. It would be like going to the hospital and insisting on doing your own c-section.
My book is now four days away from its publication date. I have seen an advanced copy. Am I happy with the results of my “campaign of collaboration?” Yes. My novel is still my baby, but she has my editor’s eyes. She looks spiffy in the cover designer’s custom creation. She’s all grown up and ready to hit the shelves. In case your wondering, I’ll be the woman in Barnes & Noble on March 6th snapping pictures of her on display like she’s a kindergartner getting on the school bus for the first time. “Say Cheese.”
Sometimes the “possessive” author part of us and the part that wants what’s best for our books are in direct conflict. What do I mean? Have you heard of the “helicopter parent?” I would argue the “helicopter author” also exists—she’s in all of us (guys, you can read “he’s” if it makes you feel better) and if we don’t keep her under control our book will suffer.
Repeat after me – “I am a wordsmith, I write, I write really well. But it takes a lot more than writing to make a book a success—it takes a village (it’s okay, you can steal that phrase from Hillary Clinton, everyone else has). Once I have a publisher I will let the professionals who work there do their jobs.”
That’s precisely what I told myself immediately after I signed the contract for my debut novel (The Sister Queens). Despite being type-A, I decided to make a conscious effort right from the first trimester not to micromanage every step on the publication trail, and not to freak out when I discovered that I didn’t have the political capital to do so anyway. Only a few days before my due date (launch), I am pretty proud of myself. I think I lived up to my pledge not to helicopter parent, and I am going to share the secrets to my tongue-biting success.
Keep your eye on the BIG picture – book sales. I want to sell books. My publisher wants to sell books. We all want to sell my book to people who are not ourselves (and not our friends and family for that matter). So what we like—in terms of a cover, or a title or blog-ad copy, etc—runs a distant second to what a majority of book-buying, cash-carrying potential readers will like.
And the truth is, authors (especially debut authors) may not be in a position to predict what will catch the eye of the average book buyer. I am not trained to do that (nor have I conducted studies or otherwise made it my business to keep my fingers on the pulse of such things) and you probably aren't either. Which leads to my next point.
Remind yourself as often as necessary, that years of experience and professional training DO count for something. Publishing is a competitive industry. The folks our publishers hired didn’t just walk off the street and say “this looks better than working at McDonalds.” They are professionals. The marketing and art department folks are trained to know what gets a book picked up off a “new releases” table. They have been designing covers and brainstorming titles for years. With this in mind, I decided, even as I was offering my own cover ideas (as my editor asked me to) I would stop well short of trying to “direct the brush” of the cover artists and I would accept that they might know best.
Similarly, my editor has been polishing manuscripts since well before I thought of writing them. So, when I received my editorial suggestions back in the second trimester, instead of growling “my baby is perfect as I wrote it,” I consciously adopted a listening frame of mind, and seriously considered every suggestion. My editor gave me the gift of “outside eyes” and not just any old eyes, veteran eyes.
Was ceding some portion of control over a novel I’d lived with and loved easy – not all the time. Did I take every suggestion my editor made – no (ultimately it’s my name on the cover). But neither did I assume I knew best (or if I did assume that for some, giddy, amount of time – I made sure not to email my editor until the feeling passed).
Bottom line: I wanted a deal with a major publisher precisely so that I could tap into the resources and experience of “the best.” Disregarding the type of accumulated expertise my publisher had to offer would have been stupid and stubborn. It would be like going to the hospital and insisting on doing your own c-section.
My book is now four days away from its publication date. I have seen an advanced copy. Am I happy with the results of my “campaign of collaboration?” Yes. My novel is still my baby, but she has my editor’s eyes. She looks spiffy in the cover designer’s custom creation. She’s all grown up and ready to hit the shelves. In case your wondering, I’ll be the woman in Barnes & Noble on March 6th snapping pictures of her on display like she’s a kindergartner getting on the school bus for the first time. “Say Cheese.”
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