The Power is in Your Hands

Sounds like an advertising campaign, doesn't it?  It's actually the message of an article by Annette Fix , the editor of WOW! (Women on Writing).  My friend and writer, Greg Allen, who is keeping his angel-eyes on marketing avenues pour moi, sent me this article about getting online book reviews...which, it appears, will be critical for me, since we're still waiting for the ARCs less than two months before book launch day.


(Can you hear me gnawing on my fingernails?)

The article by Fix is a great resource for writers.  I hope it will be of value to other writers who need reviewers.  Thanks, Annette, for the compilation of sources.

This is a scary time for me, I'm not kidding you.  I feel as though I'm not in control of this process, try as I might to get my ducks in a row before the book launch. I'm getting reassurances from my publisher, which is nice, but I'm discovering a (possibly inherent) proclivity for panic that is screwing with my sleep habits, which used to number one, and rhymed with "sleeps like a drick."

Add to this mounting anxiety the unrelenting notion that I am experiencing this all alone.  ALONE, people.  Because, frankly, there aren't many writers who comment on my blog (though I do have StatCounter, which tallies my visits, so I'm pretty sure you're out there reading...), and I've been searching, surfing, and row boating my way through the internet, and have found not one blog about publishing a debut novel with a small press.  I've found several websites by established authors and debut novelists with big-name publishers--and they're delightful--but not sites by authors who can commiserate with, or at least validate, my anxiety.

Enough negativity!  (But I would really like to hear from you out there...)

On a happy/weird note, I'm reading four novels at once.  Barbara Kingsolver's Lacuna, T.C. Boyles's The Women, Allison Winn Scotch's The One that I Want, and Jenny Nelson's Georgia's Kitchen.  Very different books with their own pace and charm, but it just so happens that the fall semester begins next week, and I have these four books left to read.  I'm cramming like a college freshman.  Also, it leaves less time to worry about the progress of the publication of SONG.

On "not" Writing

At some point this summer--after I finished the spring semester and before I began teaching the summer class--I stopped working on my current novel.  I guess "delayed" is a better term.  I always feel guilty and grumpy (the "two G's," as in Mom has "the two G's") when I don't/can't carve the time to write a few pages.

I've consoled myself by considering other kinds of writing (blogging, commenting, letter-writing, check-writing, password-typing, etc) as useful and necessary.  But I do need to learn to balance my novel-writing time not only with family time, but also with non-novel writing time.

This whole marketing pre-publication business made me very uncomfortable this past week.  "What?! Ask my friends and family to actually buy my novel? Egads."  (It's what several marketing books and author sites say is non-negotiable.  It makes me feel "eek.")

But I've crafted a note, with as much humor as possible, to my F&F (friends and family).  Half the letters are sent.  I have to get over feeling weird about it, I guess, and hope no one thinks our friendship is based on their expressing any interest in my work. Just wanted to document this tottering step in the publishing process.