The Quiet Time...or, Mommy, Why is That Lady Muttering to Herself and Twitching?

Countdown to publication: Four weeks, minus 1 day.

This is when many authors go slowly nuts. All revisions on the book—for better or worse—are finished. Not even a comma can be changed; not even a question mark. Someone is working hard, turning manuscript pages into actual books; but the author’s part in the creation is over. Marketing and publicity plans have been finalized. The heady days of e-mails and phone calls between author and publisher are at a lull. Nothing now requires the author’s input.

Cue the nail-biting.

I’m no good at waiting for a bus, let alone a publication date. When it comes to the quiet time, it’s like all caffeine, all the time. I’m scattered. I can’t get to sleep. I fret about everything. That the book won’t get reviewed. That it will get reviewed, and the reviews will read exactly like hideous, cackling hyena laughs, if hyena laughs could be translated into English. I fret that the pub date will come and no one will notice because readers will be too busy swarming around another title. You don’t even want to know how many young adult novels are pubbing the same day as mine. In fact, I don’t want to know. I stopped counting at six.

So, yeah. It's the quiet time, and I’ve got the pre-pub jitters like you wouldn’t believe.

This is what helps:

My sweetie, who has the front row seat for every fret and anxiety I can dream up, and who still hasn’t run screaming out the door.

My writer friends, who get the deal because they’ve been through it themselves—especially Sally Nemeth, who took me on the hunt for a fab 1940s dress to wear to my publication shindig, and the hunt was good, and spoils were brought back to the lair in triumph. Did I mention the fabulousness? Oh, child. There’ll be pics, you just wait.

My non-writer friends, who are steeped in yet more wonderfulness because they get it, too. Or they’re all actors right up there with Cate Blanchett, only Cate Blanchett would be getting that narrow-eyed little frown of hers that makes ordinary people look like ferrets and yet she remains gorgeous as she telegraphs with her ice-making eyes, You’ve become a crashing bore, get hold of yourself, can’t you? Bloody American, and none of my wonderful friends are doing that. Yet.

Kitties falling asleep on my keyboard.

Working on the next book. Because no matter what flavor of reality ends up smacking itself all over the book about to hit the shelves, there’s always another story that needs telling. Publishing is one thing. Writing is a whole different beast. Writers write, and so…off I go.

While I wait, the next story is waiting for me.

The Art of Enticement...and an Announcement

For me, the most mysterious aspect of the manuscript-to-book journey has to be the cover art. Think about the cover’s job. Sure, it has to look good…but is that enough? In the bookstore, surrounded by hundreds of other books, the cover has to entice the reader. Look at me, it has to say. Don’t I look delicious? Don’t you just have to know what I’m about? Come on, pick me up. You know you want to. Once the book is in the reader’s hands, it’s up to the concept and the writing to clinch the deal. But first, the reader has to pass by all those other books and pluck this one off the shelf. We say “don’t judge a book by its cover,” but come on…of course we do.

In fact, the judging starts even before the cover makes it onto the book. Case in point: this early design for Ten Cents a Dance. When I saw it, I thought…nice. Just…nice. Would I pick the book up, though, if I was browsing through a bookstore? Well, umm... It's pretty, all right. But to be honest, it doesn't really pique my curiosity.

Well, as it turned out, nobody was really happy with that first design. And this is why I love my agent and my editor, and I adore the book designer, whom I’ve never met but if I do, I will wash her windows and her car and walk her dogs and make her dinner. Because once it became apparent nobody was really happy, she started again from scratch. Authors usually aren’t involved in cover design—many authors are shown their cover as a courtesy, and that’s it. But my editor asked for feedback, and bless her heart, my agent and I gave it, and they listened, and the book designer (who, by the way, is responsible not only for my book, but also for probably 20 other titles coming out this spring) knocked it right out of the park:



This is gorgeous and striking and enticing as all damn, and if I saw it in a bookstore, I would make a beeline and snatch it right into my greedy little book-loving hands. That girl looks like she's up to something--perfect for my main character, Ruby. The mood is more tense, more mysterious. And I adore all the little details: the pinstripes, and (you can't see this, really, but take my word for it) the way the woman's nail polish matches the color of the title font. And then there's the little tagline above the title: Bad boys and secrets are both hard to keep...

No secret that I'm in love with this cover. Kudos to the whole amazing team at Bloomsbury and to my wonderful agent. You've made this author one happy gal.

So what's the book about, you ask? And when will we see it in real life?

Here's a sneak preview of the flap copy:

Chicago, 1941: When her mother becomes too ill to work, fifteen-year-old Ruby Jacinski is forced to drop out of school to support her family. But her dull factory job makes life feel like one long dead end...until she meets neighborhood bad boy Paulie Suelze. Soon, Ruby discovers how to make money—lots of money—while wearing silk and satin and doing what she does best: dancing. Paid ten cents a dance to lead lonely men around a dance hall floor, Ruby thinks she’s finally found a way out of Chicago’s tenements…until swinging with the hepcats turns into swimming with the sharks.

A mesmerizing look into a little known world and era, Ruby’s story is resplendent with the sounds of great jazz, the allure of beautiful clothing, and the passions of a young generation in a country on the brink of war.

Coming to a bookstore near you on April 1! If you want to read an excerpt ahead of time--and have a chance to win a signed copy--be sure to sign up for my newsletter here.

The Journey Continues: First Pass Pages

I thought I’d get to blogging about this earlier, but, you know, holidays and whatnot…so here we are, better late than never, talking about first-pass pages.

When last we left our book-in-progress, I was reviewing copyedits and going over the manuscript, looking for errors. Two months later, another big FedEx package lands on my porch. But for the first time, the pages inside aren’t a raw manuscript. They're still loose, not bound; but otherwise, they look exactly how they will in the finished book. They’re designed. The words are typeset, the chapter headings are set off in an amazing bold font. It’s beautiful. But my publisher didn’t send them for me to admire. No, it’s time to—once more—proofread for mistakes. But honestly, at this stage, how many can there be? I sit down with my pencil and Chicago Manual of Style, and not even three pages in, oh, my God. You’ve got to be kidding.

My editor and I ended up going over all the corrections via phone. Me in Oregon with my set of pages, she in New York with hers, both our copies bristling with colored sticky tags. A different shade for every person who’d found stuff to fix. Five readers in all: the two of us, the copyeditor, the proofreader, and my good friend/writing mentor/fresh-pair-of-eyes, Karen Karbo. The scariest thing? Each of us had caught something that the other four missed. That’s how sneaky some of this stuff is. And not just typos, either. I picked up a plot inconsistency that had completely eluded me earlier. D’oh! *smacks forehead with hard object*

And yet my editor somehow made this whole thing fun, rather than nervewracking. For this, she deserves sainthood. And me—when I find an occasional slip-up in a book I’m reading, I’m a lot more forgiving than I used to be. Because I know, somewhere, the poor author (and his poor editor) are smacking their foreheads, saying, But we went over it eighteen-bazillion times! How could we have possibly missed that?

Yeah, dude. I know. But it's still a beautiful thing.

Writer-Geek Heaven...

...is two days spent bundled under an afghan in a rocking chair , with my manuscript, a sharp pencil, big pink eraser, a cup of coffee, and the Chicago Manual of Style. Outside, it rained; inside, kitties snoozed on the bed. A cozier, nerdier time could not have been had.

It was time to review copyedits.

As I mentioned in my last post, I adore copyeditors. First, I strongly suspect that they are even geekier than I am. Second, as I noted before, it’s the copyeditor’s job to keep me from making an idiot of myself in public. As I went through the manuscript, one thing became clear: me and proper comma use, not so much acquainted. What can I say? I put them where the pauses sound in my head.

So if the copyeditor is catching all the mistakes, what is the manuscript doing back on my lap, the person who made the mistakes to begin with? Because my job, at this junction, is to go through every change suggested by the copyeditor. The author may not have final say over the cover or the title, but s/he has absolute, final say over the actual writing. If I felt it was utterly essential that those commas stayed where I originally put them, then all I needed to do was indicate so on the manuscript. Take that, Strunk and White!* My word is law!

Then again, my manuscript was blessed with a wonderful copyeditor who really knows her stuff. That, and I’m not an idiot.

Reviewing copyedits isn't all coziness; it's also stressful, and not only because I'm never sure if I'm making the little squiggle at the end of a line deletion correctly. This is crunch time, the last chance an author has to make any significant changes. By this time, I have so many different versions of certain scenes in my head, it's hard to see the words fresh on the page the way a reader will. And there's not much time to ponder. One week to turn the manuscript around. But by Monday afternoon, I was done, the sun was out again, and the manuscript was winging its way back to New York--in better condition, I hope, than when it arrived.

*"Strunk and White" is the nickname for the book The Elements of Style. It was originally written by William Strunk, Jr. a zillion years ago, added onto by E.B. White only a million years ago, and is the one essential reference on written English that everyone should have. Everyone. It's only about 80 pages long and it's plain, clear, common good sense and a masterpiece. So no, I don't really defy Strunk and White. But I could. If I wanted to.

From Manscript to Finished Book...The Journey Continues

So my editor has read the revisions, and my agent, too, and they love them. Whew! Can I just tell you what an incredible relief that is? I mean, you think the book is good, and that you’re making it better, and you hope so, but you’re never sure until someone objective reads it. So that enthusiastic thumbs-up from the Powers That Be means a lot, and it feels heavenly.

If the manuscript needed more revisions, my editor would have sent it back to me. But since it didn’t, it’s now gone on to the copyeditor. The copyeditor’s job is to catch mistakes that everyone else has missed so far. Those can be as minor as using the same word twice in a sentence, to as major as chapter structure and pacing. Copyeditors also do a lot of fact-checking, looking for inaccuracies. Yes, it’s a novel…but one grounded in the real world, amid real events. In short, the copyeditor is a sharp-eyed perfectionist, whose job is to keep me—the author—from making an idiot of myself in public.

I love copyeditors.

Meanwhile, work proceeds on the cover art. Just as with a book’s title, the publishing house has full control over its cover. Most authors are shown the cover art, as a courtesy, but we often have no input into the design. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I can draw, but I’m awful at graphic design, and when it comes to color, well, let me just say that if it weren’t for my highly multi-talented friend Laura, my house would now be an awful shade of chartreuse instead of the lovely muted earthy green it is. At the same time, though, my agent and I had some ideas of how we wanted the Ten Cents a Dance cover to look. My editor, bless her heart, has been completely open to our input. I can’t wait to see what magic the art director at Bloomsbury conjures to convey the spirit of the book.

And what am I doing, during all this activity in NYC? Enjoying the brief lull before I get the copyedited pages back—catching up on house stuff, brainstorming the next novel, and of course practicing veterinary medicine. I expect the copyedits to arrive any day, and when they do, I’ll let you know what’s involved on my end. Let’s just say, it’ll be time for my inner geek to shine!

Re-Vision

Last sentence, last period, done. Stare numbly at the computer screen for a few minutes. Attach manuscript to an email and hit Send. The book flies away to New York City. I collapse on the couch with a big juicy comfort-food-style novel and turn off brain. Meanwhile, in NYC, my editor goes to work.

Several weeks later, the manuscript—printed, this time, rather than electronic—arrives at my door via the wings of FedEx. I open the package with a mixture of excitement and anxiety, riffle through the pages. Penciled in the margins are brief notes from my editor: Wow! and Great line and Tighten through here and, in several places, See ltr.

Ltr. means the editorial letter accompanying the manuscript. I’ve heard a lot of people complain that editors don’t edit anymore. If that’s true, then I’ve hit the publishing jackpot, because my editor is amazing. My first draft, like all first drafts, had its creaky places—the action in one chapter not quite tracking with what came before, the emotional pitch a little off, the characters’ motivations gone a tad wonky. Most of those, I thought I’d fixed, or convinced myself, No, it’s fine, really. But my editor has an uncanny nose for spots like this—she nailed every single one I knew about, and some I didn’t. If you’re having flashbacks of English comp class, getting your paper back with red marks all over it like a mouse after a cat’s done with it, fear not. The editorial letter is thoughtful, detailed, supportive, and encouraging. It's not criticism, it’s collaboration. Reading it left me inspired and enthused to tackle the rewrite, full of new ideas and possibilities for the story.

Inspiration and enthusiasm are key, because rewrites are tough. I heard this bit of writing advice once and never forgot it: “The first draft is the writer telling herself the story. The second draft is the writer telling the reader the story.” Meaning, the first draft is where we figure out what happens and what the book is really about. In the second draft, the job of revision is literally that—re-vision. Seeing the story again, but this time from the reader’s perspective. Almost every scene is re-imagined to streamline the action, heighten the intensity, get to truths that weren’t quite realized before. Some scenes are tossed completely. (Another classic bit of writing advice: “Be willing to kill your darlings.” Painful—but necessary.)

From the arrival of the the manuscript on my porch to a finished, revised draft: six weeks. Ten or twelve hours a day, five days a week (I work my day job the other two days). That last week, I was at the computer sixteen to eighteen hours a day. And then...

Last sentence, last period, done. Stare numbly at the computer screen for a few minutes. Attach manuscript to an email and hit Send. The book flies away to New York City. I get dressed, grab a protein bar, rush to my day job. Meanwhile, in NYC, my editor goes to work.*

*To find out how the revised manuscript continues on its way to a finished book...stay tuned.

And the Title Is...

Ten Cents a Dance!

That's the newly official title of my second novel. A lot of people are surprised to find out that authors don’t get final say over what their title is. That’s not to say that the publishing house won’t go with what we suggest; for my first novel, I was really attached to Tallulah Falls, and fortunately the folks at Bloomsbury loved it, too. Simple as pie, warm fuzzies all around.

In her book The Forest for the Trees, former editor Betsy Lerner recounts the story of how Peter Benchley’s first novel got its title. How to convey the terrror of a great white shark hunting humans at a popular coastal resort? They tried Death in the Water and Leviathan Rising and just plain Leviathan and The Jaws of Death and, Mr. Benchley estimates, perhaps a hundred other suggestions. Even his dad got in on the act, with What Dat Noshin on My Laig? But whatever someone’s favorite was, someone else was sure to hate it. Finally, with the book about to go into production, a choice had to be made. The only title that everyone didn’t absolutely loathe was…Jaws.

Which now, of course, seems the one and only perfect title for that book.

Titling my second novel, while not as straightforward as the first, was thankfully not nearly as agonizing as the Jaws experience. The whole year I worked on this book, I called it Taxi Dancer, mostly because I had to call it something besides Second Novel and I couldn’t think of anything else. I kept waiting for inspiration to strike, but then in March the manuscript was finished, it was time to hand it in, and still lightning eluded me. Nobody at the publishing house was crazy about Taxi Dancer—which was OK with me, I didn’t like it, either. My editor came up with Ten Cents a Dance, and that proved to be the winner, to everyone’s great satisfaction!

Next week, I’ll write about the editing process (which I just finished—whew!—and which is why I’ve been absent a while from this blog!)

The Light of Day

Done.

I composed an e-mail, attached a file, hit Send, and away flew my manuscript to New York. My second novel is now in the hands of my editor and agent.

Second novel—but the first one I’ve written under a deadline. This is the thing about novel writing: Your first novel, nobody cares. I mean that literally. Nobody cares. Only you, the writer, care. You have to care enough so that it doesn’t bother you that nobody else cares. For years, if you’re like most of us.

Harsh? Maybe. It’s just that so many people start writing novels, and not many finish them. One out of a hundred, is the going quote, although how someone came up with that number, I’ve no idea. Anyway, there’s a lot of half-written books out there. So, when it comes to fiction, agents and editors don’t want to see it or hear about it until it’s finished and polished to a bright sterling shine.

The upside? You can take as long as you want or need to get that polished gleam in your manuscript. For my first novel, Tallulah Falls, it took three complete drafts written over something like 3½ years. Then another major revision for my agent, then another set of revisions for my editor. This doesn’t count all the minor fine-tuning that went into it along the way.

For my seond novel, Taxi Dancer, I had one year. Because this time, lots of people care. My agent, my editor and all the wonderful folks at my publishing house, Bloomsbury. They’re on a schedule. Taxi Dancer is on a schedule. And none of them can do the jobs they do so well, until I turn in the manuscript.

Gotta make the deadline.

And I did.

Now I’ve got a little breather, and I’m catching up. With my friends, most of whom I haven’t seen or talked to in weeks. With my blog (sorry, blog readers!) With my house, oh, the poor house! With my sweetie, who bore all my anxiety and neglect and took me out for margaritas when I knew, just knew, that I’d written the plot into a hole it’d never get out of. (Plot problem solved halfway through margarita and some very fine tamales).

I feel like a bear coming out of hibernation—squinty-eyed and blinking in the sunshine, sniffing the air. Looking to see if the old neighborhood still looks the same, and if there’s any early berries to eat.

Mmm, yes. Blueberries. Time for a snack. More later…