Wednesday, January 6, 2016

ARGHHHH. PUBLISH MY DAMN BOOK ALREADY

I'm in that exciting as Hell (because Hell is exciting) time of an author's life. Book is done, edited, beta read, combed over, hashed out, taken behind the shed and beaten and taken out to dinner and then breakfast. I'm shooting out review copies, and am finding readers are getting to it faster than I would have imagined.

I used to beg for takers to read my self-published piles of steaming dog crap, now they take it willingly. Huge thanks to all of them, and to the beta readers who are my friends for life

I've been chasing highs all my life, but this high of waiting for a book to be released can't be chased, but rather slithers up your leg, slips into your body through your orifices, and then replaces your spine until you're all wobbly. It's a different kind of thrill, and once it's inside you it takes over. You become "The Thing" not really yourself anymore, but pretending to be yourself and going about your daily duties while inside all you can think of is the book release.

At least that's me.
ARGGHHH: PUBLISH MY DAMN BOOK ALREADY
Part of the book preparation for ALL SMOKE RISES:MILK-BLOOD REDUX was done by  Julie Hutchings, who is a fantastic editor. I contracted her partly since I knew she had a passion for books and an understanding of the work they take, and that she would treat my baby with care. Well, she did an incredible job, and returned it much better than I left it. She made so many sentences zing by eliminating lame-ass words that I had stuck in there as clutter. (I clearly saw their 'lame-assity' once they were removed.) She reordered some sentences in paragraphs. Identified over-used words. Noted tense issues. All of this, and she got it back to me not only on-time, but early.

And if you've ever had anything edited and stared at those comment circles in the right, you've also felt that cold isolation in your soul. Well, it's like a conversation with Julie. Her comment bubbles came alive. They spoke to me. They rose out of the computer like ghosts from the machine and had more personality than any comment bubble in the history of all time. I shook my head, laughed to the dog, and commented back while going over the edits. I recommend her highly and without reservation. Contact her here.

I worked hard for ALL SMOKE RISES to serve as a stand-alone read. The kind of book you can pick up without having read MILK-BLOOD and still fully 'get-it'.

If you're not sure you should start with ALL SMOKE RISES, well, here's the deal. If you pre-order it, and shoot me a message here that you did, I'll gift you a free kindle version of MILK-BLOOD so you can have both of them on your kindles. Read them in whichever order you'd like. Bamn, problem solved.

(This blog post would be better if Julie had edited it.)


ALL SMOKE RISES

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