It's Almost Time!

On Thursday night, I got the final edits for my book from the publisher at Evernight Teen. And I was shocked when she told me the release date would be August 30.

Two weeks!

In e-publishing, everything moves much quicker than with traditionally printed books, but wow!

I thought I would share a bit about the process for those who aren't familiar with it, or at least the way it's worked for me.

1. Write a book. (okay this really involves about 50 steps, but I thought I'd condense)
2. Submit book to publisher via email. This is very cool because it saves tons of trees, not to mention the expense of printing out a whole manuscript, copying it, and mailing it off to who knows how many agents and publishers.
3. Hopefully, get book accepted. I was extremely lucky because I know most authors have to do step 2 a whole bunch of times before finding a publisher to take the book. Believe it or not, Evernight was only the second publisher I submitted this book to, and that's probably why it was so hard when I got the first round of edits back! Harper Voyager was the first publisher and I fully expected that rejection.
4. Sign contract and wait for first round of edits. In my case, there was a large gap between the contract signing and the first round because of some changes in personnel. My book got shuffled from one editor to another, and then re-evaluated by the acquisitions editor.
5. Complete first round and send back. Except this part took me 3.5 months! There were major issues identified with the original manuscript, especially concerning the target audience. Essentially, the way I had written it was more suited to an early teen audience rather than the upper YA target. Hence, the massive re-write.
6. Receive second round of edits and send back. Thankfully, the second version of the book fit with what they were looking for, and I had just a few things to smooth out. That took me less than a week!
7. Receive final edits and send back. The first two rounds have to do with the content and continuity of the story more than the grammar, spelling, punctuation. The editor will correct those too, but the last round focuses on it. Of course, I still found some mistakes that not only I had missed in all the times I'd gone over it before, but the editors had missed as well. This happens. And I bet the readers will find others that we missed along the way, too! Sorry!
8. Formatting and uploading to retailers. This is the part that I don't have anything to do with. The publisher will take the Word document and format for all the reading formats (e.g. pdf, epub, mobi, lit, etc) along with the cover (which I'm hoping to receive soon!) and then they send it to the retailers. 
9. Release day! It may not get to all retailers right away, but will definitely be available on the Evernight Teen site and Amazon. Don't worry. I'll post links :)

For me, the process from step 2 when I submitted to Evernight, took just over 7 months. And that's only because it took me so long to do the revisions. With a traditional publisher, it would have been over a year, or more.

If you'd like a print copy of my book, they'll still be available, but they use a print-on-demand system. This works out well because it means there aren't piles of the book sitting around gathering dust in stockrooms and warehouses. The retailer prints only a few at a time. 

So now, I'm just waiting and counting the days! I should be receiving the cover in the next week or so, and I'll do a cover reveal when I get it. Stay tuned!

X5: New and Improved

The book is done, sent to the publisher, and now I'm just waiting for the next round of edits, hoping that I have pleased my ninja editor. But I'm thinking positively!

And in the spirit of positive thinking, I have some treats for your reading enjoyment! Here is the new blurb for the book:

Being a socially awkward geek with anger management issues has made Travis Armstrong an outcast, but on top of that, he has visions of the future. Not that he can tell anyone, except in an anonymous online forum. When he takes a chance and meets with another group member, he winds up at The Bunker, where everyone is like him, and where, finally, he feels like he belongs.

Tara Gage has been at The Bunker since she was thirteen years old. Even among the residents there, she’s unique, and her special talents lead her to discover that The Bunker is not the safe haven it seems to be. She’s determined to escape and get back to her family.

When they each have visions of the other’s death, Travis and Tara know they have to run. With their captors desperate to get them back, they must rely on each other to get away before their visions become reality.

You may also remember a few weeks back I participated in a blog hop. Well two of the book bloggers who took part featured excerpts from the new & improved version, for which I'm very grateful. The first was Amy of Amy's Book Den, and you can read that excerpt by clicking here. The second was The Hope Chest Reviews, and that excerpt is available here.

Both of those excerpts are from my heroine's point of view. Today I have one for you that's written form the point of view of my hero, Travis. Enjoy (but please remember that it's unedited)!

"Get a grip!" Travis muttered to himself as he entered the bathroom. At the sink, he splashed some water on his face, and then gazed at his reflection in the mirror. I can do this. It was his first real chance with a girl and he didn't want to ruin it before they had the opportunity to get to know each other. He gave himself a quick pep talk, tried to think of a couple topics of conversation, and then headed back into the dining area feeling more confident.

When he slid back into the chair, Kate was on her cell phone. "Not too much longer...I know...Okay, I have to go." She turned it off and shrugged her shoulders. "Sorry. My mom just wanted to know how much more time she had to shop."

"No problem," Travis said. "You'll have time to finish lunch, right?"

"Yes," she replied. "I told her I'd call her. So, have you thought about university yet?"

He took a long sip of his soda before he answered her. "My dad's a prof at Columbia, so I'd get a discount on tuition there. But I need to get in first and that might not be so easy."

A crinkle appeared on her forehead. "But you said you get mostly decent grades."

"I do. Except for history. But the problem is staying out of trouble. I'm off this week because I got suspended."

"Suspended?" Her eyes went big and round. "What would you get suspended for?"

He took another drink while he thought about the best way to phrase the answer. "A guy tripped me in the cafeteria and we got into a fight. And it wasn't the first one last week." He shrugged. "The principal felt I needed the time to work on my anger management."

"Wow!" Kate said softly. "What will you do if you don't get in at Columbia?"

"Well," he said as he set his drink back down. "Maybe NYU would be a good choice. If you were here, I would already know one person." To his surprise, he actually winked at her. He was starting to relax at last, and his confidence was growing. Boldly reaching out for her hand, he said, "I would like to get to know you, better."

Her eyes widened again, but she didn't withdraw her hand. She leaned over to take a drink and he did the same, draining the last of the cup. When he set it down and looked at her again, she seemed to be studying him. Her face began to swim in and out of focus, and his head felt like it was spinning. He turned to look out the window and felt the world tilt. The last thing he remembered seeing before he blanked out was a self-satisfied smirk on Kate's face.

The Light At The End of the Tunnel

So when I first entered the tunnel labelled Write A Book, I had no idea what I was getting into. Lots of people dream about someday being able to see their writing in print, and I'm one of them. For many years though, stuff kept getting in my way. I've always been a writer, but I was horrible for starting things and then having them fizzle out on me. It usually went something like this:

1. You know, that idea would make a neat book.
2. Oh, and it would be great if events X, Y, and Z happened!
3. I love this idea & I'm going to write it down!
4. (after approximately 5000 words) I'm just not feeling it anymore.
5. Why can't I just finish it already?

There were variations on this of course, but  finishing was my problem. Don't ask me why. I'm an avid reader, and a decent writer, and I have a good grasp of story construction, but for some reason I just couldn't ever get it done.

It was a little over a year ago that I started getting really serious about writing again. An idea hit, I sat down, and voila, 20,000 words later I had a completed story. Now that's barely novella territory, but that story had one thing going for it: it was finished!

That was when the challenge landed in my lap. Harper Voyager was having an open submission extravaganza for the first two weeks in October 2012. They were looking for books that were a minimum of 70k. I had a nugget of an idea. Could I turn the nugget into a full 70k? And more importantly, could I do it in a month, because I only found out about it at the beginning of September. You never know if you don't try right?

Well imagine my astonishment when I did it! Now, I only finished it on October 14 (the last day of submissions) so I didn't have a chance to do much in terms of revising. I wasn't at all surprised when I got my nice rejection email in January. But now I was free to take the book somewhere else, so after going through it again, I sent it to Evernight Teen. 

And they wanted it! Yay for me! So I signed my shiny contract and waited for the edits. At the end of March I received them and it inspired my Salad in a Bag post.  It was then I began the process of revising. Well, I use the term "revising" lightly. More like completely rewriting. 

So what originally took me a month to write, took me three and a half months to re-write. But guess what?

I'M DONE!!!!!

The re-writes are finished and in the hands of my trusty beta-reader, and I will be sending it in to the publisher soon. This is not the end of the tunnel, but I can see the light! I will still have to do more edits, but the most difficult part is done. 

Thank you to all of you who have been on this journey with me!

Image from www.freedigitalphotos.net

Editing Sucks

I thought I'd surface from the sea of editing to do a bit of blogging. Just for a change of pace! (I'm not procrastinating. Blogging is important too!)

So it turns out writing 300 pages is easy. Okay, not easy, but it's just the first step. I am a weird combination of a plotter and pantser. For those unaware, a plotter is a writer who outlines their book down to the tiniest little detail. Like what flavour cake their main character ate at his third birthday party. I read a book on outlining by a woman who takes an average of 3 months to outline her book.

3 months to outline? I wrote my entire book in a month.

Of course, perhaps that's why I'm now having to edit the crap out of it. But I digress. Where was I? Right - pantser. A pantser is a writer who starts with a nugget of an idea (What would happen if witches wanted to turn all the children in the world into mice? Thanks Mr. Dahl!) and then just starts writing, letting the words go where they will, giving a big middle finger to outlines and plans in general. The problem pantsers often have is writing themselves into a corner.

My personal approach, and one that I think a lot of writers use, is to do a rough outline. I'll name my characters and write physical descriptions of them along with some major personality traits. Then I take my "what if" and plan a series of events to get me from the beginning to the end. So I'm somewhere between the two extremes. I'm a plotster. Or is that a planter? Whatever.

I tend to edit as I go along. If I think of something as I'm typing, I'll go back and change it right away. And I hate those squiggly red, green and blue lines under the words in Word. They taunt me until I go back and fix the spelling or grammar or whatever. After my book was rejected by Harper Voyager, I revised and edited it again before submitting to Evernight. Now I'm faced with the daunting task of "ripping down and revisioning" my book and it's hard! *stamps foot, pouts, and crosses arms* I have had to readjust my premise, outline a new plot, change the timeline, rename the characters...it goes on and on! I may even have to change the title of the book. Arrrggghhh!

Anyway, just wanted to share my pain. I'm making headway. The long weekend gave me a good opportunity to dig into the story and I've already written 11, 000 words of new material. I've cut a good deal of the old stuff, and I've expanded some of it. And I need to do more, so I'll sign off now and get to it.

Books Are Like Salad in a Bag

image from www.freedigitalphotos.net

Picture this scenario: You want a salad, but you're too lazy tired busy to chop everything and put it together. What's the answer? Salad in a bag!

I love salad in a bag. It's the easiest thing in the world to prepare. Open bag. Dump in bowl. Add dressing. Eat!

If you're anything like me, you always have the best intentions. You see the salad, you buy it because it's easy, take it home, put it in the fridge, and forget about it. Then a few days later, you move a container of sour cream and discover the bag of salad again. You take it out and dump it in a bowl, but you notice that a few pieces have gone really brown and gross around the edges. So you start to pick them out. As you do, you notice more and more pieces that have gone bad. Soon, the pile of bad lettuce starts to outgrow the pile of good lettuce, until you get to the point where you wonder if there's anything good left in there at all or if you should just chuck the lot of it.

Turns out the same thing happens with books.

I got the edits back for my book today. Here's a picture of my editor.

From author Jon Keegan's Blog

I know it's the editor's job to pick apart a manuscript and help the author make their book even better, but I'm beginning to feel like my book is the salad in the bag. There is so much that needs to be chopped, it's sorely tempting to just toss it all.

It's irritating and frustrating. But in the end, the salad book will be better because all the gross, bad parts are gone. And just when I thought I was making Caesar salad, it may end up being a tossed salad. The finished product is going to be very different from what I originally envisioned. And also from what I've already shared with you!

So this Sunday, there will be no snippet. In fact, the snippets from the previous weeks will probably not make it into the final product. And in the meantime, be prepared to find me tired, cranky, and with considerably less hair than before.