Some things nobody told me about being a debut author

When my agent sold my book last year, my release date (March 23, 2010), seemed soooo long to wait.

What I didn’t realize is that tons of exciting little things would happen along the way, and those things make it not so bad to wait. In fact, I find that every dumb little thing that happens is sort of exciting when you're coming up on being a debut author.

I was reminded of this the other day on Twitter, when Tez from Tez Says twittered me a link to an Amazon page (pictured here), humorously wondering what was up with it - why am I keeping people in suspense? (At least I think it was Tez - I can’t find the twitter now!).

I went and looked and check it out! My book #2 is there! This may not seem that impressive, but it’s super exciting to me. When you're having a book or series coming out, little things like this are always magically appearing.

Or sometimes my editor will email me, and that is always sort of a kick. Even when the email is blank, it's this little shot of fun excitingness. Or, the other day, she emailed me about a thing, and the same email was sent to a few other authors I admire the hell out of, like we're this group now.

The cover

The Spectra Bantam gang asked me about what sort of clothes my heroine, Justine Jones, might wear, and any suggested backgrounds. I had all kinds of opinions and ideas and sent a bunch of photos, of course, including this one (below) I found on Sartorialist, a fashion site that fashion-savvy galpal Kwana turned me onto. And this artist at Spectra worked it up into a really cool cover. Maybe I’m blathering here, but it was sort of amazing to me that some artist in New York was paid to spend time working on a cool piece of art to represent the world and character I created. When I first got the cover (see cover on sidebar), I could barely stop looking at it.

Editing

My agent would often talk about the “editorial letter” that was coming, but I didn’t think it would actually be a letter. But it was. I really loved that. The letter had all these little things to change.

In the letter, my editor said I could change whatever other little things I wanted to, even if she didn’t call for it in her letter. But, when I even changed one little word, I was like, am I sure this is a better choice? This might be the word that goes in the final book. Am I really really sure????

Other random things:

• Being a writer, I guess I assumed I would/should write the back blurb, which I figured would be a version of my query, but then the Spectra gang sent one that they made to me, and goddamn if it wasn’t nine million times better than I could’ve ever done. Even though I tweaked it a little.
• “Front sales.” Just in case you’re wondering, that’s the passage at the front of the book, often sexy, that’s pulled out from somewhere inside. I didn’t realize I would even have one, but one day it appeared in my inbox. I was so surprised by the passage they chose, and they sort of stitched a few things together to make it, but I thought it was smart.
• Writing is such a zero-collaboration zone, so suddenly having all these people with me on the project who are really good at what they do, I never expected it.
• If I ever get a tattoo, it should be the rule for using lay, lie, lain, lied etc. Because apparently I will never get that right. In fact, after the editing experience, whenever I’m about to use the word, I think what it should be, and if I decide lay, then I use lie. And vice versa. That is my new system.
• Oh, and also, guess who uses WAY too many exclamation points!!!!! If you were my twitter friend you would see how terrible I am about this. (And if you’re not my twitter friend, why not? … @carolyncrane)

Anyway, maybe someday I will be more jaded about this. I hope not, though, because I feel so lucky. Okay, now I'm really thinking about that lay/lie grammar rule tattoo. It would be sort of funny if I got it around my arm, like the way people get barbed wire there. Do you think I would regret it??