Recently in While My Sister Sleeps Category

Wow.  You folks are amazing!  We had a record number of entries, more than a third of them new visitors to the site.  My assistant, Lucy, printed out all the names, cut them into strips, and put them in a big bag.  Then we shook the bag and stirred the strips with our hands and shook the bag again, over and up, over and up.  I mean, we're talking totally low-tech here, but I love it.  So ...

By the time you read this, Chapter 1 of my new book, While My Sister Sleeps, will be posted here at the site.  If you're on my email list, you'll have received a note about this.  If not, feel free to take a look.
 
But wait.  Let's back up for some unfinished business.  Remember the squash I mailed frozen last Tuesday night? 

I knew I was fixated on the election, but that point was driven home this week when I suddenly realized that the publication of While My Sister Sleeps is coming up fast.  For those of you who don't know, this is the title of my next new hardcover.  No reissue of an old book, this is a brand new one that I finished writing in May.  Read a synopsis of While My Sister Sleeps, along with a few author comments, in my Books page.
 
The official publication date is February 17, 2009.  But you, my dear reader, may be able to get an early copy of the book.

Huh?  Magic Carpet?  Well, isn't this a magical, mystical trip we take each time we go online?  Think about it.  With a few clicks, we're anywhere in the world.  Maybe you don't see it that way.  Maybe, if you've been surfing the web since you were a wee tot, you see the online world as your backyard.  I don't.  I surf every day of the week, yet I still see the World Wide Web as something of a miracle.

And the things it allows me to do? 

The Author's Galleys are the pages of my book as they will actually appear in the finished product.  This is the next step in the publication process that I've been outlining for you.  It's actually the last step for me - my final chance to catch any mistakes or make any changes.

What did I catch reading While My Sister Sleeps?  I caught a single "hydrangea" that should have been the plural "hydrangeas" to go with the verb "were."  I caught one spot where "daughter" was supposed to be "son."  I caught a couple of places where the quotation mark was missing at the end of a line of dialogue. 

I hate having my picture taken.  Hate it.  I'd rather go to the gynecologist than face a camera.  Seriously.  Some people look better through a lens; I do not.  I see every little flaw, every little blemish.  Some people tackle the camera head-on; I am pathetically self-conscious.  I like taking pictures, precisely because that means being behind the camera, not in front.

But it has to be done.  Take a look at this website.  The pictures you see here now were taken two years ago.  It's time for a fresh look, one that is consistent with my new book While My Sister Sleeps.
 
The first order of business is finding a photographer. 

Yes, that is my voice you hear in the trailers and podcasts posted at this site.  And hey, it surprises me, too.  Who'd'a thought that taping voice-overs was part of an author's life?  Not me.

But I spent all of this morning propped on a stool in a recording studio, wearing headphones, papers in front of me on a music stand, and I read and reread and reread again the scripts I have spent the last week laboriously writing.  The scripts in question are for the trailer for While My Sister Sleeps and related podcasts that will be posted over the next few months.

I gotta tell you, it was a hoot.  I mean, once you get past the self-conscious stage, there is nothing intimidating here ...

You don't want to know.

Actually, you do, if you're reading this, so let me explain.

The copy-editor is the person who reads my manuscript after my editor and I are completely done with it. She (perhaps he, but this time around it's a she, so I'll use the feminine) reads through every word with an eagle eye for inconsistencies. She doesn't smooth out wording; my editor and I have done that at an earlier stage. Rather, the copy-editor makes sure that if John Doe has brown hair in Chapter One, it remains brown throughout the manuscript. Same with eye color and the spelling of a name.

A copy-edited manuscript can be an author's nightmare ...

Wow. I have to tell you; my publisher gets it right. I'm talking about the cover for my latest book, While My Sister Sleeps, which goes on sale on February 17, 2009. Some books have an obvious cover angle (think mom and baby in Family Tree). While My Sister Sleeps had no obvious angle. I'm sure there were brainstorming sessions aplenty within the art department at Doubleday, and a first photo shoot was done. The proposed cover was sent to my agent and me. Neither of us felt that it worked.

This may answer a question many of you ask. Do I design my own covers and, if not, how much input do I have?

The last you all heard from me on this topic, I was working single-mindedly to finish While My Sister Sleeps. So what happens once I type THE END on the final page?

Actually, I don’t type THE END on the page, since the powers-that-be would only have to delete it. When was the last time you read a book with THE END printed on the last page?

But it’s there in my mind. Filled with joy, relief, and no small amount of apprehension, I email the whole manuscript to my editor in New York. Then I settle in for a few days of mind-rest. I mean, for the first time in nine months, I can’t work on the book. It’s out of my hands. I wait for comments from my editor. In the course of my career, this has taken anywhere from three days to three weeks. My current editor is the three-day person. Literally, I emailed the manuscript to her on Friday and on Monday she called me with a few suggestions for revisions. The operative work here is “few.” She loves the book (as does my agent, who read it at the same time)! But there were several things she wanted me to rework.

A writer’s dream is for her editor to say, “It’s perfect – there’s absolutely nothing I’d change.” But I am not a prideful person. When my editor says, “I love this book but think it would be even stronger if you brought David in sooner and made Nick simply Molly’s friend, rather than her lover,” I listen. And doing revisions is nowhere near as difficult as the initial writing of the book. It’s modifying what already exists. Easy.

I made the revisions, emailed the new manuscript to my editor, got one or two additional small requests. Then it was done. The whole revision process took a month. And While My Sister Sleeps is now in the production pipeline in New York.

That’s it? Not quite. Now the business side starts. To begin with, I flew down to New York for meetings about the publicity and marketing of this book. These were fabulous meetings – really brainstorming sessions – and we came up with some great ideas. Doubleday has set the pub date at February 21. Mark your calendars, please.

Back home, I’ve set to work doing web stuff for While My Sister Sleeps. You can already read a summary of it on the book page. BTW, no final cover yet. We had a preliminary one, but the art department wanted to reshoot one of the characters. While they’re doing that, I’ll be writing the script for a trailer, to be taped in August. I’m also researching locales for new author photos for the HOME page of this site. Think lush plants and gauzy greenhouses … Boy, do I hate having my picture taken. Always a challenge.

More challenging, I now have to come up with a plot for my next book. Any ideas?