Separation of Faith Is Almost Here!
Last week Separation of Faith, the novel that’s been tracked through this blog since the launch posting last November 4 (https://cherilaser.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/, went into post-production where all the formatting is finalized and the printer files are established. By the end of this week, I should have in my hands the “printer copy” for the hard cover and the soft cover for one final review. These will be actual copies of the book, covers and all, and their receipt will be a hugely monumental moment! I’ll take pictures and post them for all to see!
Once I approve everything, the book will “go live,” marking the official publishing date, and the title will begin feeding into all of the online and brick-and-mortar retail outlets. That process will take another couple of weeks, and I’m not going to do any promotion until I know that the book is available everywhere. Needless to say, the next two or three weeks will be unbelievably busy as I pull what feels like millions of marketing pieces together.
The one date that I do have confirmed is my book launch party, which will be at the Hilton in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, on Thursday, September 23, from 4-7 pm. That’s when all stops will be pulled out and the Journey’s next phase will officially begin. A Calendar of Events will be added to the Web site very shortly (www.SeparationOfFaith.com), and the last quarter of the year promises to be extremely full of stuff (much of which I probably can’t even imagine yet). My second surgery (search my blog for “breast cancer” to find relevant headings in posts) will be on September 2, and that operation (part of the reconstruction process) is supposed to make me a lot more comfortable than I’ve been since the big surgery on May 4. So I should be in great shape and kicking at the gate by September 23. A high energy level will definitely be crucial.
As we’ve discussed, one of the key elements in this plan is the video book trailer, which is going to be an amazing little thriller running 90 seconds. On Tuesday July 27, I’ll be spending the better part of the day with the fellow who’s putting the thing together for me. We are very close to having a finished product, and I absolutely cannot wait to share the end result with you! In preparation, I’ve been doing a lot of reading about using video book trailers effectively, and I’ve learned that there are at least 14 different sites, in addition to YouTube, where our masterpiece will need to be loaded. As I’ve said many times since I started trying to get my arms around this octopus–Yikes!
The Focus of My Reading Lately
Now that there is really nothing left to do to the internals of Separation of Faith, my editing focus has been on the reduction of The Truth About Cinnamon (which seems to have been going on for a millenium at this point). Right now I’m entering the changes from the last edit. When finished with that, I’ll do one more read-through on the computer–and then–YAY!–the updated manuscript will go to the publisher–hopefully by the end of July!
Since this will be a re-do agreed to by the publisher when I elected to publish Separation of Faith with them, the book will basically go directly into production. At that point, the original version (which will then become an official 1st Edition) will no longer be available for purchase anywhere. The new 2nd Edition will probably take about six weeks to go live. So, by the time I’m launching the promotion for Separation of Faith, the new Cinnamon should be available. At least, that’s the plan.
Meanwhile, in addition to thoughts about my third novel, which are beginning to gel in the spare recesses of my mind, my attention has been drawn to every blog and article I can find relative to book promotion. I thought my list of avenues to attack was fairly comprehensive as a result of the Rising Star Application (https://cherilaser.wordpress.com/2010/06/18/48-journey-update-whew/). But there is actually a seemingly endless list, I’m discovering, of things I need to try. Looking at the whole picture is always a little overwhelming for me, so I’ll take a topic or two at a time, as they develop, and share them here like I’ve been doing with the video book trailer. The concentration on the promotional elements will begin in earnest the moment the Cinnamon edit is complete.
Some Additional Information for You
Along with things I need to learn and do for my own Journey, I continue to be on the lookout for information that I think will be helpful to you on your Journeys as well. This week I found several articles that touch on topics we’ve addressed before, but that I continue to believe are extremely important for all of us:
- Alan Rinzler, Consulting Editor at Jossey-Bass Publishing in San Francisco, wrote a post titled The Author Background Check: Cautionary Notes (http://www.alanrinzler.com/blog/). This subject was one of the huge revelations that launched my blog and Journey last fall after attending the Writer’s Digest Conference in September in Manhattan. The fact that our queries of agents or editors in traditional publishing houses immediately triggers a Google search of us blew me away. Well, there are apparently lots of other checks performed as well, and since everything ever posted online about any of us remains there forever, that could be highly problematic. Decisions that affect our Journeys are frequently made based on what’s being discovered. Rinzler’s article could be very sobering for some of us who are trying to break into the traditional publishing arena. (In March, I referenced another of Rinzler’s posts on his view of self-publishing, which you might find of interest if you missed it the first time: https://cherilaser.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/30-journey-from-publishing-obscurity/.)
- We’ve talked a whole lot about the importance of having our work edited by professionals (something I did not do, much to my regret, with my first novel). Here are three more perspectives on that subject, which has become a major hot button for me: 1) The Myth of the Evil Editor by Victoria Strauss (http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2010/07/myth-of-evil-editor.html); 2) A Fourth of July Lesson in the Value of Editors by writingfordigital (http://writingfordigital.com/2010/07/04/a-fourth-of-july-lesson-in-the-value-of-editors/); 3) A Good Edit Would’ve Fixed That by April L. Hamilton (http://aprillhamilton.blogspot.com/2010/06/good-edit-wouldve-fixed-that.html). The point abundantly made by all three of these is that the quality of editing in our work is as important, if not more so, than our writing, our stories, and our characters combined. And this is true whether we’re pursuing our Journeys via a mainstream route or an alternate path.
- Since I’m beginning my focus on the development of my third novel, I was drawn to Janet Fitch’s 10 Rules for Writers (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2010/07/janet-fitchs-10-rules-for-writers.html), which I found very useful and thought you might as well. I especially enjoyed her point #10: “Torture Your Protagonist. The writer is both a sadist and a masochist. We create people we love, and then we torture them. The more we love them, and the more cleverly we torture them along the lines of their greatest vulnerablity and fear, the better the story. Sometimes we try to protect them from getting booboos that are too big. Don’t. This is your protagonist, not your kid.” After reading wonderful pieces like this, I begin to think that I should have my head examined for trying to compete in this business … 🙂
- Here’s another interesting take on self-publishing–My Novel: There’s An App for That! by David Carnoy (http://publishingperspectives.com/?p=17935).
- Jane Friedman of Writer’s Digest posted about “New Tools for Entrepreneurial Writers” that consolidate social media input into a daily newspaper: (http://blog.writersdigest.com/norules/CommentView.aspx?guid=f0aa3c49-14df-4391-82a7-a77bc90d93d4).
- And finally–and probably my favorite–Victoria Mixon, Editor, posted 6 Personality Types Who Will Succeed as Writers (http://victoriamixon.com/2010/07/13/6-personality-types-who-will-succeed-as-writers/). I encourage you to read the entire post. But I was particularly struck by her “#5. THE PATIENT: those who take their time, realizing life is long and a career in the arts takes the whole of it and even the greats never lived long enough to learn it all.” What she goes on to write is so beautiful and so applicable to all of us that I want to end this post with her words:
“Somerset Maughm lamented it. Flannery O’Connor lamented it. You can lament it too: you will never live long enough. You can devote all the decades of your life to the craft you love and be ecstatic you did, but you will still die, like Albert Einstein, leaning out of bed with the last frail ounce of strength, grasping for a reproducable theorum of the divine.
“And you will know, as you lean, that you gave it your all, every day of your life: your passion and curiosity and love and devotion to this craft that means so much to so many but, especially, to you. And you will die grateful you had the chance, thanking heaven you stumbled on it while there was all that time to luxuriate in it … even if you became a writer only days before you died.
“It came to you–this extraordinary craft–as a free and unfettered gift, and you got to own it, for just a little while.”
Have A Great Week, Everybody!
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