Deadlines
You’d think that after the book was in the can, the final proof completed and the manuscript off to the printer, I’d have nothing to do but sit back, put my feet up (if I had something to put them up on) and wait for publication day.
Wrong.
I knew there’d be a lot of work. I’d been warned. Marketing is work. It’s work to do marketing. But, man, there’s a lot of work to do to get things moving publicity wise, outside the arc of actual book production. If I was a full-time writer (not there yet – I have a full-time day job, a part-time job, and a son and relationship with my wife to keep going in addition to writing) maybe it wouldn’t be such a big deal. But I’m sweating it out today. Okay. Okay. I’ve got a book coming out in 16 days. That’s a great thing. But the work is far from over.
Hunger Mountain wants my revised essay on historical fiction writing by Wednesday and my MAGPI presentation in Phili is on Wednesday. Then, because my hardworking publicists have been setting me up for interviews and events – stacking them like lincoln logs – I’ll be doing multiple gigs each week for the next three weeks. Did I mention Book Expo? I also still have to get the launch party set up. Just what do you do at a launch part? I have to have one. Everyone has one. Don’t they? These are all good problems to have. There are good problems and there are bad problems. These are in the good problem camp.
Time is ticking.
It’s funny about the essay for Hunger Mountain. The editor, who is wonderful, told me gently to rewrite it. She found a few good thoughts in my first draft but needs more, deeper, better. I know what she means, I think. But it’s a paradigm I’m not used to writing in – a bit academic, a bit writer-ly. Last night I cut out a third of it and tonight will have to rearrange the order and… dig deeper. I need to hit my deadline. Perhaps, while I’m driving at 5 o’clock in the morning towards Phili on the Jersey Turnpike inspiration will come to me. My son, who is 9, has trouble with non-fiction paradigms also. We have that in common. I’ll take my advice to him and use it. I’ll sit down this evening, while the laundry is the building’s laundry room doing cartwheels back and forth inside the machine, and write it down. Or… in my case, revise, revise, revise.
MAGPI in Phili
MAGPI (the Mid-Atlantic Gigapop in Philadelphia for Internet2) is on the calendar for May 11 in Philadelphia.
May is heating up with pre-publication day gigs. I’m looking forward to each of them, even if I’m a bit nervous. Events are performances and performances carry their own load of anxiety – some more than others. In my day job as a trainer I teach people, amongst other courses, how to do public speaking and deal with their anxiety (it’s the number one fear people have – even more than death or marriage or child-birth). So you’d think it would be easy for me, right? Well… public performance (radio, face to face, even blogging) has its weight of anxiety for everyone – me included.
I have things in place to deal with anxiety – specifically yoga practices I’ve cultivated and studied over the last twenty years (they do work if you use them – especially breathing practices or pranayama), preparation (I never go in cold), being in touch with and knowing my process for being anxious (if I know my process I can deal with it better at each stage before I hit PANIC.), self-talk (hey… it works, I talk to myself – don’t you?), and practice. There are others but those are my go-tos.
Back to MAGPI.
My most excellent publicist, Marissa DeCuir at JKScommunications has set me up with this wonderful gig teaching an hour long workshop on writing action-scenes for 10-12th graders. There’s a lot of fight scenes in Open Wounds so I have something to say about how I like to write them and what kinds I like to read.
Digression: Favorite fight scene from when I was younger – The Fellowship of the Ring, by JRR Tolkien, the chamber of Balin’s tomb in the mines of Moria right through to the balrog on the bridge. Wow. It captured my imagination at 12-years old like no other book at the time.
Okay, MAGPI. Here’s the link. The workshop is called, “They Fight!” It’s not open to the public. It’s a distance learning gig from University of Penn out of Phili with up to ten classes involved remotely from ten different schools. But I wanted you to know about it.
I’m really excited – and anxious – the best combo to have because one without the other would either be impossible (just excited?) or miserable (just anxious?).
Here’s another piece. My friend, David Brown, actor, fight choreographer, teacher of stage combat, and all around excellent human being, will be helping me out with some swordplay demos and readings. He’s the best and I love to work with him so it’s a real bonus for the students and of course, him and I get to hang out all day on the drive down and back. I’ve promised him lunch. It’s great what friends will do for you.
Anyway… MAGPI. I’ll let you know how it goes.
The Last Typewriter
The title would be the beginning of a great story. I’ve filed it away as one I need to work on… some day.
But… I just heard this on the news, then read about it and can’t believe it. The last typewriter factory in the world – not just in India, but in the world, closed down today.
That doesn’t mean nobody uses typewriters anymore, but it certainly cuts down on the number of typewriters that will be available and out there to be bought and sold. There is now a limited number available, end of story. At least one author I know, Dewey Lambdin, writes on a typewriter – letters and I believe first drafts of all manuscripts. I’ll have to ask him if he hires someone to put it all on a computer for him so that it can get to publishers in electronic form. I don’t know. But I’ll ask. I love his Alan Lewery Naval series. But he has no website – no electronic presence other than what his publisher sets up for him.
I digress.
Typewriters.
It saddens me there will be no more made. It makes me want to go out and get an old manual Oliver or Remington or Underwood. It’s the end of an era. Mind you I love computers and the internet and spell-check – oh I love spell-check – but I also love the sound of clicking keys and the look and feel of an old manual typewriter.
I first started writing on a manual, non-electric Smith Corona. Then I moved on the an electric. I used the IBM Selectric at a few jobs – with corrector ribbons. But what I remember the most is having to type manuscripts of short stories to send out and having to throw out a page if there were more than three errors on the page. An error was X’ed out and four X’s meant I had to do the page over. It was brutal for a learning typist in High School who would get to the last line of a page and make that fourth mistake. Ugh. I can still hear the sound of the roller ratcheting as I pulled the paper out in frustration and lined another one up – drew it in. Back then, proofing your work had a different meaning.
Hey. It wasn’t that long ago.
So long typewriter factory in Mumbai. I wonder how much each of the last 500 typewriters that came off the line will sell for? Just curious. I’d better reread the article.
Anybody else have a typewriter story?
Agent Lost
I have a question for you.
It goes like this.
I got my first agent over ten years ago.
I lost him because… he died. I’m not kidding. I had no idea he was ill when I signed on with him and his partner – who happened to be his ex-wife – but after two years he passed away and I was out on my own. I found out later I was the last author he’d signed. His colleague offered to represent me but only in a half-hearted way. “He (meaning her ex-husband) loved your book. I didn’t,” she said. I passed on her offer.
My second agent, after representing me for three years, left the business to open a gourmet deli. Some time during the beginning of the third year she also had a nervous breakdown. I found that out later also.
My third agent left the business to take a job in public relations. He didn’t tell me he had left his agency until three months after he was gone. I didn’t know because I was working on revisions of my manuscript. “I’m sorry,” he said when I called him with a finished product – asking for his opinion of it, “I’m no longer in the business.”
“Why didn’t you tell me,” I asked.
“I forgot to tell you,” he said.
My fourth agent, one month before my debut novel hits its publication date – which she sold for me last summer – called me yesterday to tell me she’s off to work for an investment company. She’d been taking courses to get her certificate so she could work as a financial advisor… or something like that. I had a hard time taking it all in after I heard her say she was leaving the business.
So here’s my question.
Are all agents like this or is it just me?
I called my wife and told her about my new agent lost and she said, “You’ve driven another one out of the business. You have a perfect record.”
Seriously. Did I?
The good thing is, my last agent sold my book. The bad thing is I’m without an agent again.
It’s hard to get one.
It’s hard to keep one.
So I’ve got three things to do. 1) Keep working on my next book. 2) Start looking for another agent because I still own the movie rights to Open Wounds. 3) Get back to work on my publicity campaign. Next month is going to be a busy one.
So it goes.
Author There…
Open Wounds gift Package
Open Wounds Gift Mugs
I went to two Barnes and Nobles in Denver – back in the trenches. The two managers were really nice people but one had no idea I was coming and the other thought I was coming the following week. I had contacts at each so I knew they had been called. But I guess they either get a lot of calls like this or they don’t take them seriously, or the writers usually don’t show up so they don’t take them seriously.
Jana, at the Glendale store, was especially nice, did remember my name (yeah!) but thought I was coming next week. She found an empty table and let me give her my spiel. She sounded interested and promised to read the book – I gave her one of my precious few ARCs – and she said she’d pass it on to other staff at the store. She told me she would put it with the rest of the ARCs they have.
I smiled at that and pictured a cavernous room filled with overflowing ARCs, signed by the authors, gathering dust.
“The process,” Jana told me, “Is I can send a note to the buyer and say I liked the book, in the hopes of getting it into the store, but that’s it..” I told her that would be wonderful. Every voice in the wilderness of book-land shouting out my name is a good thing. Thanks, Jana. Five minutes in Glendale and I’m out the door. I’m realizing at this point that I should have tried to go to more stores. I’d somehow thought I’d be at each store at least 20 minutes. What was I thinking? Well, if I’d really been thinking I’d have known it would be me pitching and them nodding and then moving on. No one had read my book yet. What else could they do?
At the Down Town store I met Manny, who spoke to me for ten minutes – ten minutes. He seemed genuinely interested. When I gave him the gift he smiled and said, “Chuck Palahniuk (of Fight Club fame) brought us handmade jewelry as a gift. It was really cool so thanks for bringing this.”
“I brought a mug,” I said. “It has a quote from the book on it.”
“Yes,” he said. “I see.”
A book-seller at the checkout desk, Miguel, motioned me to come over. He asked me about the book. He was curious. I gave him a mini-pitch. He wrote down my name and website address and said, “Thanks! It looks good.”
So the evening ended on a high note.
Lunievicz 