It's a Real Book!!!!!!

*This post contains graphic and gratuitous photographs of both jacketed and unjacketed books. Proceed at your own risk!*

;)

I got sample copies of WINGS yesterday!!!!

When the printers print their books, they generally send a few ahead so the publisher can see what the finished product is going to look like. The rest wend their way slowly to the US via (I read this somewhere????) a big boat. Yay!

Well, my samples got to Harper this week. Not all publishers share their samples with their authors (for various reasons) but I'm glad that Harper does. So yesterday the UPS guy came to my door (at eight o'clock! I LOVE my early UPS guy!!!) with three copies of my book. Not the ARC. The. Real. Thing. Check it!

I have been so anxious to see what they did with the inside cover. There's been kind of a trend lately of having a picture (like a second cover) under the jacket and I know some people really love it, but I don't. Also, I was a little concerned the book would be bright pink. Now, I love the pink on my cover, it really works well! But no guy is going to carry around a bright pink book through the halls of junior high. And probably not high school either. So when I saw a plain black book with sparkly pink foiling on the side, I was way excited. Simple, elegant, just the way I like it!


And the spine; my next favorite part! Now, I received cover flats almost six months ago so I knew the spine was going to look like this, but I love it so much I was happy to see it anyway!! (Also, there's something about my name being horizontal that I just love!!!)

The back is more of the lush, dark, watery blue.


And the front is the image you guys are used to seeing, but with a more purplish wash than the ARCs and and a little more accentuation of the curve of the petals that make the wing shape.

*sigh* Yay!

The other fun thing I got was a copy of my signed first editions. Remember the 1350 pages from about two months ago? I got to see how they turned out!!!

I get a pretty sticker. *Aprilynne= Easily Amused . . . *


And look! It really does look like I signed the whole book instead of a big (big, big) stack of title pages!! Cool!!

So yeah, there may have been some happy dancing and some petting of books, and there was definitely some smelling of the books. (Seriously, there is nothing like the new book smell of YOUR BOOK!!!! *squeee!!!*)

So things suddenly shifted into real mode yesterday My book is real; it's in big stacks on a boat on it's way to New York. Then it will head all over the country where it will be in real stores and with any luck, people will buy them!!! Whoa!!!

I think I need to sit down . . .

Okay, coming up, next week I will be posting my tour schedule. It's already up on my website, if you're curious, but I'm going to post it here too because I would love to find out if any of you guys live in the cities I am going to because I LOVE meeting blog readers, SO MUCH!

(That and I have heard so many stories of debut authors basically reading to the bookstore employees and maybe one other person, so, yeah . . . I'm afraid of that!:D)

I'll be posting a link to my microsite that Harper is launching soon (There's an awesome contest!). I also have some fun posts planned on pre-release jitters and stress and the challenges of writing a sequel.

Ciao!

Almost Next-Month

We have a little tradition in our family. When something fun is coming up (usually for the kids for whom counting down days is very fun!) we will talk about how long is almost left. Like, "Your birthday is almost tomorrow," when it is two days till the birthday.

Well, today is a special day, because my book is coming out almost-next-month!!! I have so been looking forward to being able to casually tell people, "Oh yes, my book comes out next month," and as of tomorrow, I can!!!

Today also makes thirty-five days till Wings comes out. Five weeks exactly. Somehow that seems like a lot closer than six weeks. Like, more than seven days. Does that make any sense at all??

And let me tell you about my next five weeks! They are Craaazy!! This week is revisions, revisions, and more revisions. Next week I am going to my mom's house in the hopes that I can actually finish said revisions. While we are there we will have Easter and my daughter's sixth birthday. Then I come home to the rush of finals and putting our current house on the market the week after that. Week four is Kenny's graduation (!!!) from law school complete with a big graduation ceremony and party. The day after we have a big dinner for a bunch of authors here in Utah. And then one week to frantically pack for tour, and I will be in Arizona, signing at Changing Hands Bookstore, the day that Wings comes out. Whew! (And don't even get me started on the wild rush that will be happening the six weeks after that, culminating with, yanno, moving!) So yeah, good times!

So one last post on edits . . . well, probably the last post . . . I guess we'll see.;) I wanted to talk about what actually changes. I think it is every author's nightmare to get that first ed letter that says, "Well, we like your main character, but can she be a guy? Also, we love the plot, but can they be hunting for a legendary lamp instead of trying to survive in the Antarctic? Also, could you please cut about 40,000 words? this book is too long." And then the author can do nothing except yeild to the demand of her editor and basically re-write the entire book.

I've never actually heard of an ed letter that bad. And even big changes (Can you just nix this minor character?) are usually just that; a minor character. (I realize that doesn't make you feel better in the moment.) Most ed letters are not about changing, but enhancing. Consider a black and white picture of a girl standing beside a lamp-post. I think the scenario that a lot of aspiring authors have in their head is an ed letter that goes like this: "We don't like the lampost, can it be a tree instead? And that dress, it's awful. Can she be wearing overalls? And her hair is so short, please make it long." When really, most ed letter go like this: "We love the girl, but she is black and white. Can we put her in color? How about some vines on that lampost? With purple flowers maybe? Or red? What do you think? And the background is just a grey slate, what do you think about putting in scenery? A lush meadow. Perhaps a sharp city-scape! You can do whatever background you want, but we need a vibrant background! And you might consider airbrushing her clothing just a bit so you can't see the mud on the hem or that tear in her sleeve."

Do you see the difference?

When an editor buys a novel, they see the girl and the lampost. If they are going to buy it, they need to love the girl and the lampost. The editor will almost never ask you to change the girl, or the lampost. (Please tell me you are still following my metaphor here!) It's not about changing the girl and the lampost; it's about enhancing them so that everyone can see in the photo, what your editor saw.

Let's go to my edits specifically. Now first off, I am a minimalist. When I first started writing I wrote a huge fantasy tome (it seems like everyone has to do that once and get it out of your system . . . unless you are Brandon Sanderson, and then you get paid to do it.:)) When I realized that no one was going to look at it the size that it was, I sat down with my shears and cut 60,000 words.

And it was painful. Excruciatingly so. By the end I wanted to cut the last 20 pages just so I could be done!!;)

But it made me a minimalist writer. My ed letters always ask me to add. Always. And I'm okay with that.

So here were the big things I was asked to do in my ed letter:

-Add at the beginning (I have a series of events that, although they are important to the plot, can be lengthened or shortened without affecting the plot. Tara wanted more . . . I hope forty extra pages was her idea of more . . . .)

-Add a few more hints to the mystery. I am good at being subtle. So good, in fact, that nobody notices.:D Note to self, be a little less subtle.

-Work on my pacing. I always have to do this. I'm not good at pacing. It is something I work very hard at. Usually several times.:D

-Focus more on interesting elements instead of mentioning them and then letting them fall to the side. I have to remember that I have been living in this world for two years; so the things that are no longer that interesting to me, are still interesting to the reader.

-Enhance, enhance, enhace. Make characters more fun/hawt/compassionate/smart/etc. Give the scenes more mystery/tension/romance/etc. Just make everything in color, instead of black and white.

And that is basically my ed letter minus spoilers.

It's not about change, it's about bringing out what's already there. So really, don't be scared of the ed letter. It is a TON of work, yes--and feel free to be afraid of that!--but as far as actual "change" goes, if your editor didn't love the girl and the lampost, she wouldn't have bought the book in the first place.

How's that for a full-circle metaphor?;)

Ciao!

Underwear and Mules and Tattoos, Oh My!

Welcome back to blog tour! It's been a while, but we are back with the lovely, fabulous Neesha Meminger and her novel Shine Coconut Moon, winner of the Coolest Title Ever Award! Seriously, it makes me want to go out and eat coconut shrimp! I am really excited to read this book. Here is a bit about it!

Samar–a.k.a. Sam–is an Indian-American teenager whose mom has kept her away from her old-fashioned family. It's never bothered Sam, who is busy with school, friends, and a demanding boyfriend. But things change after 9/11. A guy in a turban shows up at Sam's house–and turns out to be her uncle. He wants to reconcile the family and teach Sam about her Sikh heritage. Sam is eager, but when boys attack her uncle, chanting "Go back home, Osama!," Sam realizes she could be in danger–and also discovers how dangerous ignorance is.

One of the things I love about Neesha is that learning more about her, makes me want to read her book even more. Neesha was born in the village of Punjab, India in the sixties. I love this picture of her with her mom. She came to Canada in the seventies and went to college, grad, school, and eventually taught college in New York City. She is now a mother of two and is working on being the novelist of two books.;) I highly recommend reading her Bio on her website; it is fascinating! . . . Plus it has lots of pictures that she probably wouldn't appreciate me posting here. *laugh*


And, of course, what Blog Tour would be complete without the Feasty Five!!!

AP: What kind of soda does (would) your MC drink?

NM: Probably Ginger Ale.

AP: Man, I love Ginger Ale. What is your MC's favorite kind of flower? How about yours?

NM: Lilacs. Mine are roses. I'm boring like that. :)

AP: No, no! Not boring--Classic! Does your MC believe in magic? Do you?

NM: YES. YES.

AP: Good answer! From both of you! Superman or Batman?

NM: Batman. But really Wonder Woman.

AP: *blinkblink* Well, okay then.;) Give us one line from your book. You don't even have to give it context.:)

NM: "If I could have a body like Gisele, I'd never wear underwear," she says. "I'd just parade around town buck nekkit."!

AP: *snort* Wouldn't we all.

You can visit Neesha and Neeshameminger.com to find out more about Shine Coconut Moon!!

Ciao!

It Has Been a Stellar Week!!

I have had a lovely week. Busy--thus not posting in five days, but lovely nonetheless.

On Monday night, my husband was looking at houses online (we're moving to Phoenix this summer.) We like to look early. It's fun! I LOVE house shopping. If possible, I like to drag the process out for months. And he found a really great, just-listed house that seriously hits every point on our must-haves list and most of our optional-but-we-would-really-like-to-have list. We have spent the last four days drooling over it. *le sigh*

Tuesday was a working day for me. Not that I don't work every day (especially during revisions, eek!) but on a day I label a "working day," it means I leave the house and work for as long as my computer's battery will last. One of my favorite places to go is here:



It is this old trolley car restaurant that has been updated and expanded into a full restaurant, but they have kept the trolley section up at the front. I always go in and ask to sit in the trolley section (as much so I'm out of the way as because it's awesome!) and I spread out my work and order a very large salad. Now, I have ordered the full sized salads here before. And they always come stacked rather high in one of those plates that is more like a shallow bowl. But hey, I generally sit there for three to four hours, so I like having something to slowly munch on the whole time. But nothing prepared me for the mound 'o salad that they brought me this time. I noticed they printed out new menus and had added a few items . . . but I didn't think they had changed the size of the salads! Check this out! (Yes, I am a nerd, I took a pic of my salad.;))



That is a big salad.

(Also, that plate is like a foot in diameter!) And it was piled so high that every time I tried to take a bite things would fall off onto the table. So I gave up and asked for an extra plate. I kid you not, I made three salads out of that monster. I thought my tummy was going to burst by the time I left!

It was really good though.:)

And I got a TON of work done!

Wednesday I went to my husband's school's Barrister's Ball, also known as the law school prom.:D We had a nice dinner, my husband got an award with a really nice plaque, and I even got to meet a fellow author who is the wife of one of Kenny's professors! It was a great night, and a nice break from the kids. (We don't actually go out by ourselves very often so this was nice.:)) It was funny though, I posted about the Barrister's Ball last year too, so I spent a good chunk of the night reminiscing over how much has happened in the last year. It's been a big year. Last year at this time I had just completed the first revision on WINGS. Since the Barrister's Ball I received my contracts, went to NYC to meet my agent and editor and team at Harper, finished three rounds of editing and countless rounds of copy-editing, got four covers (only two were keepers;)), wrote the sequel, finished another book I've been working on for almost three years, sold translation rights into three countries, went on a pre-publication tour, signed over 1350 title pages, and am halfway done with revisions on the sequel. What. A. Year. It has been amazing!

And now we've almost reach the pinacle of all that work! WINGS comes out in less than six weeks (39 days!!!). Wow! I can almost say, "Why yes, my book comes out next month!" It has been a long, fun year and really has been a lot of work! I never understood how authors without dayjobs (and especially without kids) could be panicked about deadlines. I mean, they have all the time in the world, right? I understand now. It IS a lot of work. I don't actually know how authors with day jobs do it. I am baffled. But even though I stay very busy, I love what I do and it has been an amazing year.

Oh, and yesterday my husband flew down to Phoenix and bought the house. *SQUEE!!!!*



Ciao!

Ed Letter and Chapter One!

The really exciting thing first (IMO;)).

Harper has posted the first chapter of WINGS!!! You can read it here!(It's a little hard to find; it's under the "Sneak Peak" link that is below the video interview.) I am so excited to share it with you; I hope you enjoy it!

And with that we are on to the ed letter.

You never know what to expect when you get an ed letter. When it's your first book it is especially important because even if you have had long conversations with your new editor, (I hadn't, but some authors do) you cannot tell exactly what their vision of the book is until you see their ed letter (BTW, ed letter is short for editorial letter, just in case you didn't know;)) And that means that it is the first time you truly see if their vision meshes with yours.

My first ed letter was eleven pages long. The first page was mostly my editor telling me how much she loved my book. That is important because, especially with that very first ed letter, your first thought upon completing it is, "Why in they world did she buy this book?!?!? She obviously HATES it!!!" And you know what? That's totally normal. No seriously. Every author I know has had that moment. That is why that first page is there. So you can go back and re-read how much your editor loves the book.

For me, my first ed letter was really important because WINGS is the first book of a series. That meant that we had to get all of the logistics of my mythos hammered out in this first book. Because book one sets the rules for the entire series--so those rules needed to be solid. Also, my backstory had . . .um . . . a few kinks.:D Basically I had to rewrite about half of my backstory so that it made sense on more than a superficial level. There were also big character arc things. Making David more well-rounded, Tamani a little more "human," Laurel more interesting, etc. We had a character we brought more to the forefront (Chelsea!) because everyone who read the book loved her, and Tara (my editor) suggested chopping the end of the book to give it more oomph!

An interesting thing that Tara did which I often chuckled at, was that when she presented a big problem, she was also present a few suggestions. For example, if the question was, (and yes, this is a very silly example) Why is Chelsea's hair brown? Tara might suggest, maybe she dyed it, maybe a witch cast a brown hair spell on her, maybe she wished for brown hair from a genie.

Now, the point of the suggestions was to get me thinking, so often Tara's idea were just things she threw out there. But I always laughed because I almost never used her suggestions. I would be like, "No, the reason Chelsea's hair is brown is because her parents both have brown hair," and then work my solution into the story. It didn't matter than I didn't use Tara's suggested solutions for the problems in my book, the point was that she pointed out the problems and I fixed them. But some of the suggestions she threw out for fixing them gave me a good laugh.

So it took me about four weeks to complete those edits, but it probably would have taken a bit longer if I hadn't been able to go to my mom's house for the first week of work where she watched my kids and kept a plate of something always in front of me. I got about a full forty hours worth of work done in that first week. Thanks Mom!

So, in comments, the question was asked, what do you do if the editor wants changes you don't agree with? Well, that happened in my first ed letter. Personally, I think the mistake that a lot of authors make is that they immediately call up their agent or editor and want to have it out right there. I think that is akin to the concept in writing that is generally referred to as "telling instead of showing." So as I mentioned above, Tara suggested cutting the last chapter (it was an epilogue) and letting the last actual chapter stand on it's own to end the book in a more dramatic way. (Not a cliffhanger, don't worry!) I kept coming back to that part in the ed letter and thinking that the last chapter alone was not enough. So when I got to that point in my edits, I made some changes to the epilogue, and then left it there. I let her know that I had done this in the email that I sent with my completed edits, but I didn't make a big deal out of it. I wanted to show her that I could fix it instead of cutting it, rather than just tell her.

So then my second ed letter came. This one was eight pages and came with a marked up manuscript. (Which was exciting to me. The first ed letter she told me flat out that there was no reason to send any line edits since she knew the text would be changing so much . . . and it did.:)) But, near the end of the letter, the epilogue came up again and she said that she had read through it several times and still thought the ending would be stronger without the epilogue.

So at that point, I had a choice. I could go along with it or I could fight it. Now THIS, in my opinion, is the time to actually make a fuss if you really think you want it your way. (And trust me! Editors sometimes are wrong!) But ultimately, I decided that she was right, and I went ahead and cut my epilogue. (There is a funny story behind that, but I'll share it at another time.:))

And you know what? She was right. No really. She was absolutely spot on. I can't tell you how many times on my pre-tour people told me that the ending was just perfect. And it's Tara's fault.:) So that was my half-hearted "fight" over something I didn't want.:D

However, particularly when you get to things like line edits, there will often be changes you don't like. For me, I took about 90-95% of Tara's suggestions, but that leave 5-10% that I didn't. So what did I do?

I just ignored them. I didn't point them out, I didn't make a fuss, I just kept it the way I had it, or changed it my own way, etc. Like with the whole epilogue thing, if it was really a big enough deal to Tara, she would point it out again in the next round of edits, and then we could talk about it if need be. And that seems to have worked out just fine for us.

So this year I got my ed letter (Nine pages, BTW) and the subtle differences were very interesting. Tara has realized that I, personally, am the kind of author who doesn't need a lot of praise. So my "I Love This Book!" section of my ed letter is less than half a page. Enough, but not overdone. Also, as mentioned about, Tara has seen that I don't really need suggestion for fixing problems, so she hasn't done that this time. There are just open ended questions for me. Why does XYZ happen? I like to think that it's because she trusts me to come up with a good solution on my own.:)

I really feel like Tara's and my editing relationship has grown. I have learned about the way that she edits, and she has earned about the way I revise, and I really feel that my newest ed letter reflects that. She had learned what I need, and what I don't need. And I have learned to trust her absolutely exquisite taste! As a testament to that--I kid you not--there is not a single thing in my ed letter this year that I don't agree with. Not. A. Single. Thing.

But that doesn't mean that I didn't have those first couple of days when looking at the ed letter made my head swim. In fact, because much of my revising is on the first quarter of the book, it felt especially intimidating to me because I find beginnings really, really difficult and I was going to have to re-do my beginning.

But I also have the confidence of knowing--absolutely knowing--that she is right. That this is going to make the book a lot better! And that's exciting to me.:) . . . even if it is a ton of work. *Eek!*

So . . . yeah . . . I gotta get back to it.

Ciao!