New Guest Post And Chance To Win A Copy Of "Saving The Planet & Stuff"

My guest post, Writing About Food--Again And Again, is up at Word Spelunking. It's a flash essay about my use of food in my writing.

Word Spelunking is also running a raffle with a copy of Saving the Planet for Kindle, Nook, or Kobo as the prize. You can enter until July 31st.

Many thanks to Aeicha for hosting me.

Now What Is It Gauthiers Talk About When They Get Together?

In reality, I was with the in-laws this weekend (which is why you didn't see a Weekend Writer or Weekend Links post), which is like being with Gauthiers, but different.

Interpreting A Scene vs. Duplicating An Image

 

We have a family member who is an artist, which led us to discussing last week's passing hot topic, the cover of The Rolling Stone. Then we went on to artists interpreting the scene they are painting vs. photographers who merely duplicate a scene. And we covered art photography in which photographers are, like traditional artists, trying to do something beyond simply duplicating what is in front of them.

Professional vs. Photoshopped Book Covers

 

This whole issue of art as an interpretation of something and photographs merely duplicating life, led someone to bring up the new Saving the Planet & Stuff cover. No, seriously, it wasn't me. Someone else thought of this.

Prior to beginning the eBook publishing project, I had to make a decision about the cover. I very rapidly decided I wanted a professional cover rather than a photoshopped one that we could have done ourselves. The book had originally had professional everything, and I didn't want to take it down from that level.

But my family member pointed out yesterday that this cover is more than merely just a professionally done picture. It is an artist's interpretation of the story. And indeed it is. Eric Bloom's interpretation of Michael Racine's story involved Michael holding the weight of the world on his shoulders. It was an entertaining way of making the point that the environmental issues Michael is dealing with are important. That was Eric's thought process, his interpretation.

We wouldn't have had that interpretation to work with if we'd bought some stock photos and put them together for a cover. And the stock photos would probably have been nice images that merely duplicated whatever scene an unnamed photographer was looking at. Would they have meant anything?

Saving The Planet eBook Now Available For Kobo

The Saving the Planet & Stuff eBook is now available for Kobo, as well as Nook and Kindle. All three of my eBooks published by G.P. Putnam's Sons, Happy Kid!, A Girl, a Boy, and a Monster Cat, and A Girl, a Boy, and Three Robbers, are also available in all three formats.

While Kobo isn't as well known as Kindle and Nook, it is supposed to account for 20% of the e-reader market. In addition, Kobo has a relationship with the American Booksellers Association, which involves independent booksellers selling both the Kobo readers and eBooks.

Thus making their eBooks available on Kobo gives self-published writers an opportunity to maintain some kind of connection with independent booksellers.

STP&S Pushed Back Into February: A Long Learning Curve For Self-Publishing

Publishing is hard. And takes a long time. So the ebook edition of Saving the Planet & Stuff will be coming out in February and not at the end of this month, as originally planned.

We (my computer guy and I) are publishing STP&S the hard way. In part, this is because when we started this project, we weren't aware there was an easy way. Now that we know more about this process, we probably would have had to go the hard way, anyway. STP&S is full of font changes because of instant messages, e-mails, post cards, and quotes from magazines and newspapers. (Book Links included it in an article called The Text Generation: Fiction That Incorporates Digital Communication.) That would have raised the cost of hiring someone to do this for us (the easy way), though we don't know by how much. I am happy to have paid for the beautiful new cover. However, because I don't know if I'll make back my investment on this project, I do have to give consideration to how great that investment will be.

An additional problem is the material we had to start with. Many "how-to" explanations for publishing ebooks say to begin with your Word document. Because we were republishing a published book that had been professionally edited and copy edited, I didn't have a Word document that was exactly what was in the published book. We made editing changes directly onto the last manuscript I sent my editor. We made changes on the publisher's created copy. We made minute copy changes. In order to truly republish STP&S, I couldn't use anything I had on my computer.

So we sent one of the books off to be scanned and received back the copy in three different files, from which CG chose one to work with. The scanning process made a lot of typographical changes that needed to be corrected. HTML was involved. We had to determine how the copyright page would look. We had to determine...this and that and a dozen other things.

In short, we're not quite done. And once our finished work is uploaded to Kindle and Nook, we could find ourselves with more problems. The book is still coming, just not yet.

I have been spending large quantities of time on things like writing the product description for Amazon and Barnes & Noble, seeking out blogs that might be interested in featuring the book, planning the trailer (which was completed months ago, though not uploaded--I'll explain why another time), and copy editing the text three times. Dealing with the hardcore technical stuff has fallen on Computer Guy. Early last year when we first discussed doing this, he said he thought it would be fun. It hasn't looked as if he's been having fun to me. However, a few weeks ago, he said, "You've got the rights back to My Life Among the Aliens, don't you? We can go right to work on getting that ready to publish." My response was, "Noooo. I need to do some writing this year." "But I can get started on my part," he insisted.

Clearly computer guys have an unusual definition of fun.

The Next Big Thing

For the last few months, I've been interested in community-building for writers. So I was delighted when Sarah Stevenson, author of The Latte Rebellion and a long-time blogger at Finding Wonderland, tagged me to be part of the Next Big Thing Author Meme. Not only is this meme about writing and a promotional opportunity for authors, it gives me another chance to reconnect with the blogger community I was part of years back as well as connect with writers I'm acquainted with now. For readers, this meme provides you with information on books that are in the pipeline toward publication or, even, in the most early stages of work.

I'm going to be talking about Saving the Planet & Stuff, which will be republished at the end of this  month as an e-book. Then I'll be linking to three more authors who will carry on with this project.

What is the working title of the book?

Well, back in 2001, when my editor, Kathy Dawson, and I were first discussing the book, I was thinking of calling it Summer Work. According to an e-mail I found, I thought that was sort of deep because the main character (named Edmund at that point) had a summer job, but just what was the real work he was doing that summer? Kathy's response was, "Let's sit tight on the title for now." And it ended up being called Saving the Planet & Stuff, a title I'm very happy with, when it was published in 2003.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

My family dropped in on my in-laws and found that they had company, an older couple on their way to their cabin in Maine. The husband told my preteen son that he ought to come to their cabin with them and help him set up his laptop. That definitely didn't happen, but the idea of a young person being thrown in with older people he barely knew intrigued me, and I thought about it for a couple of years. 

What genre does your book fall under? 

This is mainstream fiction for older YAs and adults. I say that not because the content is so incredibly mature, but because much of the humor involves the office/workplace and environmentalism. The work world is something teenagers are beginning to take an interest in. Middle grade and younger kids? Not so much. Committed environmentalists have made a lifestyle choice that sometimes puts them at odds with the rest of the world, and that conflict is the basis for much of the humor in Saving the Planet & Stuff. Teenagers are beginning to understand that life is going to involve some decision making. 

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

I'm embarrassed to say that this is something I have fantasized about. I can't say I've thought about it for my other books, but definitely for this one. The young main character, Michael Racine, is the hardest part to cast because young actors age out fast. Frankie Muniz is way too old, though he would have been good in his youthful heyday. Charlie McDermott of The Middle still plays a teenager. You need somebody who can project an attitude and who can be amazed that there are people in the world who are not of his world. The two pivotal adults are much easier. Blythe Danner with a long braid for Nora Blake and, if he would let his hair go gray and grow a ponytail, Tom Selleck for Walt Marcello. Big. Imposing. Sly wit. I wouldn't even object to the 'stache so long as it was gray.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

A twenty-first century mall child and two aging environmentalists experience culture clash when they're thrown together for the summer.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

This question is phrased oddly. I am going to answer it in this way: I am self-publishing an e-book edition in order to keep Saving the Planet available as a back list title. It was originally published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 2003.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I don't know if I could work that out even if I went through all the old e-mails. I can tell you it takes me a long time to write a book--months, if I'm lucky. Then there are many revisions. I know my editor and I were e-mailing about the book in 2001, which means she must have had a manuscript to look at at that point. Then it was published in 2003.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

This is always a difficult question for me because I write a lot of humor within mainstream fiction, and I don't always see much of that to compare myself with. I'm going to throw out the title I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President. Though that is a school-based story, whereas Saving the Planet is workplace and environmental humor, I found the humor in I Am a Genius mature in the same way that I think the humor in Saving the Planet is mature.

Who or what inspired you to write this book? 

My older son liked YA fiction when he was a teenager, and I was his book shopper. I understood his humor and was able to bring things back from the library that he actually liked. One day he said to me, "All the books you bring me are about girls."  I realized he was right. At that time, funny books tended to be about girls. Books about boys were about sports or something violent or dark, which he had no interest in whatsoever. So I set out to write a funny book about a teenage boy for my teenage boy. 

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

This is a funny book not just about environmentalism and office politics but about what people choose to do with their lives. That theme should work for both teen and adult readers. Michael, the teenager, is faced with questions about what he is going to do with his life. Three male models are available to him over the course of the story. Walt and Nora, the much older adults, are faced with questions about what they've been doing with their lives. (I would say did, except this couple is definitely not done living.)

Who Else Has A Next Big Thing To Blog About? 

Sarah Albee, who has written a number of children's books (and is the only writer I know, personally, who has published under more than one name), will be continuing with The Next Big Thing at her blog. While you're waiting to hear about what's coming up in her writing world, check out her blog post about hunting for bathrooms at the Mark Twain House. 

Crissa-Jean Chappell, the author of  Total Constant Order as well as Narc and a contributor to Dear Bully, will be writing about her Next Big Thing at her journal.  

And I believe we'll be hearing about Dawn Metcalf's Next Big Thing, as well.  Dawn's first book, Luminous, was published in 2011, and her next book, Indelible, comes out this summer.

Watch their blogs for their Next Big Thing. 

Later this month, I hope to do a Next Big Thing roundup of NBT posts from other writers.

Announcing A New Publishing Project

I've mentioned in passing here that I'm republishing Saving the Planet as an e-book. Yesterday I signed a contract with an illustrator for a new cover.

Eric Bloom is a graduate of Pratt Institute with experience in illustration and digital and graphic arts. His background with digital composition and web design interested me, since we're talking an e-book cover. I'm going to be marketing Saving the Planet & Stuff as a YA book this time around, and I'll be attempting some crossover marketing toward adult readers, so I was looking for an illustrator who could do an edgy, nonchildlike cover.

Eric and I also have a history. He was sitting on my deck with my younger son when I came up with the basic situation that became A Year With Butch and Spike. I was flipping burgers for them on the grill, one thing led to another, and Eric's name appears in one of the last chapters as a little thank you gift.

And now he's helping me out with what is for me a big project.