No writer works alone. Here, Ruby helps me proofread the final edits for Celebration House. My debut novel will publish in 10 days. I’m happy and scared at the same time. Is that normal? I don’t know.
George Lucas once said, “Films never get finished. They get abandoned.”
After spending every spare moment over the last two weekends – adding more details about minor characters, finagling punctuation, inserting little hints so that a sequel is feasible – I finished Celebration House. And I knew what George meant.
I returned the manuscript to my editor. I couldn’t look at the book anymore. I felt like a high school student taking the ACT who finishes the test before time is up and goes back to change correct answers. My editor emailed me later that night. The manuscript was returned to the Tirgearr Publishing and was on its way to the proofreader.
I have so many worries about Celebration House. Did I give the reader enough description so that they can envision Stratton House? Are the renovations and the speed at which they are accomplished plausible? Will the reader empathize with my main character, Carrie, or find her annoying? Are people interested in what Civil War ghosts have to say? Ugh! I just don’t know.
But I will know after August 1st when Celebration House is opened to the public. In the meantime, I stew. I fret. It’s like sending your child off to kindergarten. Are the other kids going to be nice to her? Will they want to play with her or will they think she’s just sort of, well, weird?
The rational part of my brain knows that Celebration House is just one of thousands of books to be published this year. Thousands! Will this one small volume of 45,000 words really make any difference in anybody’s world? Probably not. But boy, I sure hope it does.
Hands and arms inside the cart: What I learned from Hugh Howey. Who’s that? He’s my hero!
Finish writing my book: Check.
Find a publisher who believes in it: Check.
Promote it: Huh?
My journey into the world of published author continues. Next stop: the land of book blogs.
Now that my cover art is done and while the editing process winds down, I’ve begun the daunting task of promoting my book. My hope is that readers with $2.99 burning a hole in their pocket will know of its existence and buy it.
My publisher sent me a list of 315 blogs that review books and recommend or condemn them. My task is to write to these bloggers and ask them to review my book or consider an author interview.
Some bloggers say yes. My first was Laurie’s Paranormal Thoughts and Reviews. Some say no, like Jennifer Vido. Her blog spotlights well-known authors like Karen White. Not little-known authors like Annette Drake.
But I find myself taken aback by some of these blogs. For instance, many of them feature romance novels with lots more heat than my humble offering. Spoiler alert: there’s no sex in Celebration House. My main character can’t even touch her love interest until the part where… Oh, nevermind. I’ll let you read it for yourself.
My goal is to write to five bloggers a night. Unfortunately, this begging of bloggers takes up my precious writing time.
Here’s how it works: I tuck my 6-year-old son, Jack, into bed. Oh, hell, let’s be honest, I beg my husband to put him to bed. Then I sneak up to my office, quietly close (and lock!) the door behind me, and I enter a world I didn’t know existed.
Some of these sites I’ve stumbled onto are hosted by women younger than my daughters. These bloggers are much more skilled at designing a blog page than I will ever be. Their sites sizzle.
My book has a paranormal element, so I thought it appropriate to query the blog Paranormal Book Club. Holy buckets! Is that blood splattered all over their home page? Are there three characters on that book cover? Jack isn’t seeing this, is he? I think you get the idea.
So I posted something on Twitter about looking for blogs to promote my book. A family friend told me to check out the blog, LadySmut, by author Liz Everly. Okay. You’d think I would glimpse the subject matter by the title, right? No. I’ve never been that quick. One of the books she reviews, Venus in Furs, features cover art that made me scratch my head and wonder, what part of the human body is that? I did learn a thing or two. Did you know there is breast milk erotica?
Now, if you will please excuse me, I still have my daily quota of five bloggers to write to and ask if they will review Celebration House. Hmm…there’s a blog on this list called “Pages of Forbidden Love.” Wonder what that’s all about?
Hands and arms inside the cart, please: Next, my final edits are done! Oh, my final edits are done…
Ray Bradbury asks wanna-be writers, “Who are your friends? Do they believe in you? Or do they stunt your growth with ridicule and disbelief? If the latter, you haven’t friends. Go find some.”
I found one. My editor, Maudeen Wachsmith. Recently, Maudeen offered to read my manuscript for BONE GIRL, which I’ve had no luck selling. Here’s what she had to say:
“I finished reading BONE GIRL just a little while ago. I really enjoyed it. I think there is a market for this book. And like I said earlier I really couldn’t put it down and it kept me interested and engaged the entire time…. Keep writing. You have a gift. Don’t give up or become discouraged.”
P.S. For readers who are curious about my second novel, please visit www.authonomy.com and type Bone Girl in the search field. I’ve posted the first 10 chapters there. Also, my rejection count increased by one this week. The current count is 17: 16 from agents and one from a publisher. I remind myself, it only takes one yes!
Hands and arms inside the cart: Next, the realities of an e-book tour.
What’s my book about? Click the link below and find out.
http://www.tirgearrpublishing.com/authors/Drake_Annette/celebration-house.htm
Thanks, Tirgearr Publishing.
Megan and I after her commencement exercises for the University of Washington-Tacoma. Megan earned a bachelors in business management.
Last Thursday was meant to be a busy but organized day. My husband and I were going to rise early, efficiently pack our 16-foot Oasis travel trailer and hit the road about noon for a 5-hour drive to Seattle. My daughter was graduating from the University of Washington-Tacoma at 10 on Friday morning. My husband and I had a plan. And by 8:30 Thursday morning, that plan was dead.
It started about 7:30 when we were in the backyard. Eeyore, our Basset hound, yelped and limped over to us, his right rear paw sticking straight out. Bassett hounds are known for back problems, so I thought he’d thrown his back out. Then my husband pointed out all of the blood on the ground. Sure enough, he had a cut on his right rear paw. We spent about 30 minutes trying to dress the wound, but we couldn’t get it to stop bleeding. Off to the vet we went.
The vet came into the exam room and after a quick look at the wound, he pronounced our dog needed stitches. “Let me get you an estimate.” And with those six words, the money we’d managed to squirrel away for this long-anticipated trip was gone. As for leaving at noon? Ha! Joke’s on us. We could pick our dog up after 2 p.m.
The hits just kept coming. I misplaced the keys to the car we intended to leave at home. Not a big deal, but it became a very big deal when my husband hooked the trailer up to the other car and with a burst of white smoke, the electrical system shorted out. Now, we had to find those keys. Thankfully, I had a spare key.
My friend and fellow writer, Cherise Marshall, agreed to stay at the house with our recovering hound while we attended the graduation. And sure enough, at 6 p.m. on Thursday night, we hit the highway. Only to find the highway closed.
Construction crews are expanding I-90, and that requires they blow up a mountain. So, during the times when they blast, they close the highway. But not to worry. It was closed from 8 to 10 p.m., and we wouldn’t even be in that part of Washington by then. At 11 that night, when we finally drove across that section of I-90, we were treated to a site I had never seen before: huge blocks of rock, the size of our car, being carted away. The ground shook as they dumped the boulders into massive trailers.
Friday morning, sitting in the uppermost tier of seats in the Tacoma Dome, I watched my daughter graduate from college. Worth it!
Congratulations to my daughter, Megan Noel Hestir. University of Washington-Tacoma, class of 2013.
The first step for me when I sit down to write is to click on Pandora and choose which station I’ll listen to as I create. The music I choose varies with which book I’m writing.
For Bone Girl, I prefer bluegrass, from the joyful fiddle playing of Mark O’Connor to the fast pace of the Barn Owl Band. Throw in a dash of Adele and top with the soulful duets of the Judds. All mixed together, these are the themes of my middle-grade novel, Bone Girl. . Here’s a few tunes that fit this novel best:
If I’m working on A Year with Geno, a contemporary romance that takes place in Anchorage, I leave my bluegrass stations and head straight to the music of Ella Fitzgerald and crooners like her. Lately, I’ve spent most of my writing time sculpting the rough draft of this novel, so I have quite a few songs bookmarked:
For my paranormal romance, Celebration House, it’s pure Norah Jones. I wrote the rough draft of the book when I first fell in love with this blues singer. Even my hunky hero, Maj. Thomas Stewart, remarks on Norah’s voice: “She sings as though she’s courting me.”
Hands and arms inside the cart: Next, I post my book, Bone Girl, on Authonomy. Quick! Go to www.Authonomy.com and read the first few chapters of my book. Tell me what you think.
No thanks from literary agents: 15
No thanks from publisher: 1
Now that I have returned to working full-time as a nurse, I’m tempted to quit writing.
First thing in the morning, I head to my little office, AKA the spare bedroom. I turn on Pandora – which station depends on which novel I’m working on – and I start to write, to lose myself in the tale I’m trying to weave. A few minutes later, I hear the words that signal the end of my writing time: “Mommy…”
It’s my six-year-old son, calling me to come and rescue him from his bed. He’s ready to get up and start his day. It’s not even 6 a.m. But for him, the day cannot wait (Which by the way, is the title of one of my picture books).
So I promise myself, I swear an oath, that I will write after he’s asleep. Later that night, with my early-morning riser tucked in bed, I head for the office. But I’m so tired. Is there a new Stephen Colbert episode to watch? Maybe I’ll just read tonight. Because everybody knows that writers are first and foremost readers. I have a Julia Quinn novel that I’m getting ready to dive into. Did I mention I’m tired?
And so it happens: another day goes by and I have not written a single word.
I know I’m not alone in my desire to throw in the towel. At a SCBWI conference a few years ago, I had the pleasure of hearing a keynote speech by Jay Asher. I didn’t know who he was before this conference. Jay is the author of a young-adult novel, Thirteen Reasons Why. The book spent 65 weeks on the New York Times children’s hardcover bestseller list. There are currently 750,000 copies in print in the US alone.
But success didn’t come easy or early to Jay. At one point in his writing career, Jay told his wife he was quitting. She convinced him to do otherwise.
In April, at this year’s western Washington SCBWI conference, successful authors shared their experiences. The journey to publication is a hard one; it’s not for the faint of heart. All agreed that at one time or another, they wanted to quit.
I’ve got to figure out how to make time to write. Perhaps the answer is to forget any fantasy of a one-hour window of quiet and take my solitary moments in whatever time increments I can get them. Or maybe it’s to ask for help. I live with two other people who could take care of my little guy for an hour. Maybe it’s to move my writing up on the priority list. Or perhaps it’s as Deborah Hopkinson says, “You’ve got to want it more than sleep.”
I don’t know how I’m going to accomplish my goal of 1,000 words a day, but I do know this: writing makes me better. It makes me smarter and funnier. It’s exercise for my soul.
And I have to think that I’m not the only person who needs to hear the voices in my head, the ones that say things like, “Celebrate your life,” (Celebration House), or “You have all of the answers within you” (Bone Girl), or “You are beautiful and deserve to be loved thoroughly” (A Year with Geno). I sincerely believe that others need to hear these voices too. But they won’t if I quit.
Hands and arms inside the cart: Next, music that moves me.
annettedrake.com 