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Here's what happened to me since December 28th, 2019. Got Elie. See post. Spent 2 weeks house training, never leaving the house other than walking her. On January 11th, my amazing editor Kristy from Amphorae sent me her officially edited copy of I Will Be Okay (on sale June 30!) for my review. This is my first novel being published and I've spent at least 30 years off-and-on writing novels so it's been to... put it mildly... a long time coming. This was exciting and amazing and by the way, could she get it back like ASAP please... On January 12th, I flew to Seattle-Tacoma airport for work. Yes that was 1 day later. Yes I had a 4 month old puppy who wasn't house trained at home. Sorry Mike! January 13 to 16 - it didn't stop snowing / raining the entire time we were in Puget Sound. We saw the sun once... for the grand total of 20 minutes one day while we were inside... good times. We left the hotel every morning by 6:30 am (actually 6:32 because the Starbucks at the Residence Inn in downtown Tacoma didn't open until 6:30 am but I was first in line every morning because did I mention I had a puppy at home and got my novel edits that weekend and was on NO SLEEP?!). We returned to the hotel at 6:30 pm. Is that a 12 hour day? Why yes it is. Do I get paid any extra for working 12 hour days in freezing cold Washington state? No I do not. Did I need to get my edits done ASAP? Why yes! So every night between 8 pm and 10 pm I skipped dinner with my boss to work on the novel edits. Which I will have to say, were helpful and strong, and after close to a year since I last read I WILL BE OKAY, it's pretty damn incredibly good. A couple of times I was like "who the hell wrote this?" Pre-order today!  January 17 - My editor kindly reminded me that they couldn't use the lyrics within the novel that I borrowed from my main character's favorite band - The World is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die - unless I had the rights. I had contacted the lead singer - David Bello - who is awesome by the way - and he was like that's great, appreciate the salute, can't wait to read it, but my manager handles things like that. Contacted the manager but there were a lot of email back and forths and I never got official permission. So I was waiting on that.
January 20 to 23, Time to travel again - a week after Puget Sound - this time to Ohio for the week, with slightly shorter days (more like a normal 8 am to 6) and did a bunch of editing at the Residence Inn Mentor lobby which serves free food/snacks/beer every Monday to Wednesdays, and I only mention that because I've been in the Residence Inn Mentor about 100 days over the past three years and I did a shit ton of work on both my novels in that lobby with their free food/snacks and beer. Yes they also have a decent exercise room. Why do you ask? January 30. Got the edits back to my editor. By the way, ONE SPACE after a period is apparently standard for publishing, not two like the way I was taught decades ago on a typewriter. So my poor editor had to go through and mass delete all the extra spaces. Sorry! February 2. Got back the proofs. Yes that was fast. The "proofs" are the "we are ready to print these copies so here's your last chance" because this is how it will look on the page with page breaks and all the edits made so make sure it looks good because this will the copy in print forever... but no pressure. February 6. After several days of re-reading for the third and fourth times just to make sure, I sent the proofs back in and everything is ready to go except for the lyrics issue. Publisher is getting antsy as there is "great demand" for advance reader copies (ARCs!) and we need a yes/no on the band's permission. Like by the end of the week (two days from now). At my agent's advice I spend two nights writing "fake" lyrics to new songs to a fake band as a backup plan. I even borrow some poetry from my Graduate Writing Poetry class (thanks Ron Block!) to turn into lyrics and it's not "horrible" but I'm disappointed. I really wanted The World Is lyrics... plus the mantra that Mateo repeats throughout the story is "I Will Be Okay. Everything" which happens to be a song by the band... also the fake band's name? Our World is Enough for Everything. Too on the nose? Well keep reading... February 7. I complain to my friend Laura about the rights situation and she says "let me see the emails"... I show her the emails with the manager and she notices that there is a phone number at the bottom of his signature. "Umm... why don't you call him tomorrow?" I'm not that bright. February 8. Anthony of Lesser Matters out of Philadelphia (they are awesome, hire them if you need band management!) gives the OK and we are back on track to send out the ARCs!!! Yayyyyyy. February 9 to February 22 - After a 40 second break, I'm now hard editing my NEXT novel, also marketing preparations; updating website; Amazon links, Indie bookstore links!; B&N! everything ! And lots and lots of house training for Elie (she's good, she's got it!) February 23 - leave for Barstow, CA marine base where I would spend the next 6 days. Still editing. On the bright side the ARCs are being printed (!) and going out this week. February 28- March 2. Mini-vacation in Manhattan Beach with a day in Huntington, and my edits of the new novel are done (!) Just need to type the rest of them in and do one last Read Through before getting to my editor. That will like take a few weeks (the last read through is sort of painstaking) but you'll hopefully be hearing about SOME KIND OF MONSTER soon... In the meantime, my blog is now caught up and the marketing blitz for I WILL BE OKAY starts today, with this post. Expect a lot more activity until release date of June 30th. I'm a little exhausted but very excited. Thanks for reading! Comments are closed.
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