Finalizing the calendar for next week

So my mother and I got together, looked at a bunch of maps of the Salt Lake area, and scheduled a bunch of drop-ins at Seagull Bookstores for next week. Some surprises when I called around: 1) They'd all heard of my book. Often they didn't know my name (not at all surprising) but when I said Time and Eternity I always got an, "Oh!" and immediate increase in friendliness. Rather shocking to me. I gather the book's sold well, but a lot of these store managers are guys. Not that I mean to be sexist. I just think they'd be entirely justified to not pay much attention to a chick novel with a pink cover. One of the managers I had to call back had a copy of the book in hand when he picked up the phone. 2) Several of them sounded rather excited to talk to a Real Live Author. I know, I know, I sound completely jaded. Rather than basking in the attention, I'm thinking, "What? Are they new to their jobs or something? Where's the bored contempt?" Maybe they are new to their jobs, or maybe all the LDS authors favor one certain group of stores and I managed to hit a few that they don't often go to. Or maybe these store managers really like that aspect of their jobs.

The full calendar's over on my E.M. Tippetts site. I made sure to do a bunch of drop-ins in the Provo area since that's where many of the readers in my target age group will be. One manager forewarned me that there weren't likely to be big crowds of them there to meet me, and I assured him that I wasn't expecting that. For the most part, I hope to meet bookstore employees during the drop-ins, though readers are of course welcome.

Then, on Thursday night, I'm flying over to Denver for WorldCon. Rather a change of pace. My mother is coming on this trip with me - she was kind enough to keep me company on the long car rides up to Utah and back. WorldCon should be a fun experience for her, if a rather strange one. I've got one panel at 4pm on Saturday, and the rest of the time I just look forward to seeing old friends and making new ones. I've got two roommates that I've never met before (not uncommon). I wonder if I'll actually get to see them, or if we'll be out at such crazy hours that our paths won't cross.

After WorldCon I'll fly back to Salt Lake, get my car, and drive home. By that Tuesday, I should have successfully spent all of the money I'm likely to earn on writing this year :-).

Weird Tales and Leading Edge

Not really a rejection entry. Weird Tales did reject a story of mine; this one originally got lost in the mail and Ann VanderMeer got me a very quick reply to my query checking up on this. So I resubbed the story and just heard back.

Meanwhile Leading Edge has invited me to have an editorial review. This isn't an offer to publish, but an opportunity to do a rewrite pursuant to their editors' recommendations, with the possibility of selling if they like a rewrite. Here's to hoping my rewriting skills are up to the task!

Now on Amazon

My book is now up on Amazon.com, one whole copy of it. Actually, this means I can sell copies via Amazon if I have any spares, which at the moment I don't. I just had to wait until someone put it in the system. Covenant, my publisher, is one of the few LDS publishers that doesn't sell through Amazon, something I always found curious given their huge share of the LDS market. They seem to maintain it by going exclusively through LDS bookstores and websites.

"Drop-ins"

My publisher has suggested that I do some "drop-ins" at various Seagull Bookstores when I'm in the Salt Lake Area for the LDSBA Convention in a couple of weeks. These are a new term and a new concept for me, but the basic idea, I gather, is going to the bookstore to meet the staff and be nice to them so that they think you're a good person worthy of selling a few books. I've read about this practice before, but never witnessed it. Yes, I'm definitely new at this.

The first thing I need to do is schedule these by calling the stores. I'm going to sit down with my mother (who's driving up to SLC with me) and together we're going to figure out the locations of all the stores so we can know which ones are near each other. The actual calls will be strange for me the first few times, but the publicist for Covenant assured me that bookstore staff will know what a "drop-in" is when I suggest doing one.

I'm also doing a couple of signings that week. Check out the calendar at www.emtippetts.com to see details.

Rough draft done

I finished the rough draft of my SF novel on Friday and my longsuffering husband is now reading it. He claims to like it, but I'm at that burned out phase where I find the sight of it icky. Means I need some downtime, and ice cream.

Then it's on to rewrites....

Grocery store signing - sold out

Today's signing at Smith's Food and Drug went very well. We sold out! Which means we'll need to see about getting more books in. Even though the book wasn't displayed before this afternoon, people figured out they could request it and bought a third of them. Another third sold all at once to one person who came in, and the last third sold over the course of about an hour.

Quite a success! Thanks very much, everyone who came!

Review in Meridian Magazine

Meridian Magazine reviewed my LDS novel, here. It's a rather nice review :-).

Going nocturnal

For the past several days I've had a hard time staying awake while I write, which I considered a very bad sign. I worried that I was getting either bored with the project or too psychically exhausted to complete it in the timeframe I wanted to. But when away from my computer, the story and characters nagged at me, so I decided it wasn't that. I wondered then if I needed to take a break from writing or else risk burnout.

Turns out it's just my insomnia, or whatever the best name for my sleep disorder is. I've had it for as long as I can remember and while it can be controlled with medication, I can't be on my medication right now because of drug interaction issues. I *finally* got some good sleep this afternoon and can now write without passing out in front of my computer. The way my disorder works is I can sleep during those rare windows when the petty dictator in my biology lets me. Missing a window means enduring more exhaustion. Unlike a normal person, I can't sleep whenever I'm tired. I can be so fatigued that I'm walking into walls but if it isn't a window when I'm sleepy, there is nothing I can do but endure it. There is no way to make myself sleepy. I tried everything from hiking 20 miles in a day to hot baths. No effect. For years I built up a rather frightening sleep deficit because I tried to practice sleep hygiene in order to get my sleep all at night. The result, I got maybe 2-4 hours per night, on the nights when I slept. By the time I found a doctor who could help me, I couldn't drive. I could barely see straight.

So, I slept through the afternoon and am now wide awake. I'll use the time to write some more because these windows of alertness are rare too. I'm looking forward to getting back on my meds and being a normal person again.

4 Wheeling

Trevor and I spent July fourth this year four-wheeling in the mountains with his family. I'd never ridden a four wheeler before, and it was fun, despite the fact that it was on rugged roads with no helmets and riding 2-3 to a vehicle, exactly as the instructions tell you not to do. The lawyer in me was cringing quite a bit.

On our way up the mountain I saw my second ever bear in the wild. It's funny because I've lived my whole life in the American west and the first time I ever saw one was in my parents' subdivision, about a week before. He was a little scrawny guy who'd been eating people's garbage and has since been taking by the Dept. of Game and Fish to be fattened up and relocated. This bear, that we saw in Wyoming, was just trotting along towards the road. At the sight of us he stopped, started, then turned tail and ran, soon disappearing behind a rise. That happened so fast that I couldn't be sure of what I'd seen. My initial thought was that it was a dog, but given where we were, I knew that was unlikely.

Fortunately, he (she?) came out from behind the rise to continue on up the hill, which was covered with grass and no trees, so we could see him fleeing for quite a while. That's the longest bear sighting I've ever had.

The picture is Trevor and I once we reached an area near-ish to the peak. It had a lovely overlook, as you can see.

It has to be fun

I have been exhausted these last several days, but have still managed to get about 12,000 words down. It's during the long slogs that I have to work the hardest in keeping my writing interesting for myself. This is a good thing, in the end of the day. If I have to keep myself alert, then I don't drift off into long expanses of prose where nothing happens. I hope! If I can stay on schedule, this redraft of my novel will be done by the end of the week. Then a week of editing and tuning, and then it goes out to agents.

Signing pictures

I finally got pictures from my signing uploaded on my computer. To the left is a picture of me with the staff of Words of Wisdom Bookstore, who were wonderfully kind and attentive. Below is me and Trevor, my husband.

The signing was on Saturday, June 28th, which was the lowest traffic Saturday they'd had in a long time. It was the beginning of a holiday week, the temple closed that day, and it was a signing, and those are often jinxed (and I'm a new writer no one's ever heard of before.)

However, in the week to follow Trevor and I did manage to nearly double the store's sales of the book. I took a boxload of copies down to Wyoming to have on hand during some readings and talks that I did. What I thought would be plenty of copies all sold out in about five minutes at the first event, so I got through the rest of the week with copies my mother-in-law had bought. She let me sell those on and I bought her replacements when I went back to Words of Wisdom.

By the way, Trevor and I are dressed up because we'd just come from the temple, which was down the street.

One step forward, ten back

I got more than 16,000 words written and deleted over vacation last week. So it goes when I write. I wish I was someone who could get it right the first time, but my first drafts are always awful, so I need to rewrite and rewrite until I drive myself insane.

However, the second act is coming together, yay! And will help me substantially revise the first act. The point at which the writing becomes easiest for me is the end of the second act. By then I know all I need to know about my characters, all of the storylines are laid out, I just need to write the finale - I've been able to do the entire third act in two days before - and then retool the first act. There's always a lot of junk in the first act at that point; stories set up that I don't need, or holes where I need to set up a storyline. I also rewrite the beginning last, so that I've got a good grasp on my characters and how they'll play to the reader.

I found this nifty device that shows progress on a book:

23,560 / 55,000 (42.8%)

The thing is, it's made for people who make linear progress. I'll cut, delete, and then write in such huge chunks that this word count will bounce all over the place. The total word count is also a complete guess, which makes this of limited use to me. My books usually come in around 60,000 to 70,000 words. Whether this one gets that long depends on how many subplots I stick with.

A Motley Vision

William Morris interviewed me over the last week and the result is posted on A Motley Vision. For anyone unfamiliar with this site, it's a Mormon arts and culture blog, and a great read, in my opinion. It's especially useful for people interested in LDS or other spiritual fiction who find the LDS mainstream market limited. The bloggers read a lot more broadly, and will find books that might not make it into the mainstream LDS distribution outlets.

Submissions

I don't have the camera hookup on hand so I can't upload my pictures from Wyoming. Nevermind. I'll blog about that later.

Meanwhile today, I've been doing agent submissions. It's hard to overstate how much I hate these. They take hours, they require serious attention to detail, and the result from 90% of them will be a form rejection letter. Yet, it's an essential part of working as a writer. Today, the car is still not all the way unpacked, there are suitcases on the floor, the house needs to be cleaned, and the yard desperately needs to be weeded. I've been up and working since 7am, and only just got back from the post office. And that was for a whopping 9 submissions - a piddly number. Each agency has their own requirements and their own forms to follow.

These subs aren't likely to lead anywhere much. This is for my second LDS novel, which Covenant just passed on because they found the protagonist too young. So this also means I need to get another novel written for them ASAP - ideally I'd like one coming out every year; it's important to keep ones name out there.

I think it very unlikely that any agent will be interested in one of my LDS novels, especially at this stage of my career, but it'd be silly of me not to send my work around to them. When I expect to get extremely miserable is when I do agent submissions for my young adult SF novel at the end of the month. Those'll have me blubbering in the corner, I'm sure. I'll have to do a million of those. One of my friends had to do forty-five submissions to land an agent, and she is a brilliant writer, way more brilliant than I am. Each query packet reduces your confidence in your writing by about 30%. You discover new depths of humility with each new one, but given the way limits work, by the time you're self confidence is almost gone, each additional 30% doesn't hurt so bad.

Signing

Okay, so my blog will be a few days out of synch with actual events, and I don't have my pictures to upload yet. But on Saturday I did my first signing for Time and Eternity, up at the Words of Wisdom Bookstore in Billings, Montana. I don't think it's possible for bookstore staff to be more supportive than these guys were. First of all, they scheduled a signing, which doesn't usually bring in much business for a store, especially not when the author is new. Secondly, they spent the entire time hanging out at the table with me, talking. Often bookstore staff don't have time to do this, what with having to run a store. Thirdly, I watched them bodily drag a customer over to the signing table and thrust a book into her hand. Now, that goes above and beyond, I have to say. Seriously.

Their support has really helped sales of the book. They averaged selling more than one a day for the first month, which for a store of their size is incredible.

I also learned the very disturbing fact that their most shoplifted items are scriptures and CTR rings. I'm trying to imagine a person reading their stolen scriptures or wearing their stolen "Choose the Right" ring and wondering if such an individual knows what irony is.

Response from Deseret Book in Albuquerque

I received a very helpful email from the manager of the Deseret Book in Albuquerque today, clearing up what the status is on their supply of my book. I gather that the initial order, done by the buyer, did not include any kind of automatic re-order for when the book sold below its minimum inventory. Usually the orders do include this automatic re-order, and so the book sold out while the store had to go through the procedures to get more in. Hence the delay in having them in store. They apparently have them in now, though, as a friend just wrote on my Facebook that she bought it from them today.

If a store doesn't have a copy of a book, though, you can always order it through them. This way you only pay the cover price and not shipping. A store employee should also be able to give you an estimated arrival date for the next shipment, though you may need to ask them for it specifically.

The manager's email now has me worried that they might have overcompensated and bought way too many books and will have to return them all and hate me forever... yeah, I should probably go to bed now.