The Birth of a Book....

I can't believe another month has passed. This blog may have to be renamed quarterly progress report. Ah well, I'll do my best to keep up. It has been an exciting month, actually. First, the cover for THE ROOKIE CLUB came back. Take a look on the "Books" page, but I think it's INCREDIBLE. The art department at New American Library, my imprint at the Penguin Group, did a tremendous job. WOW! I always find that once the cover arrives, the book starts to feel real for me. I also received copyedits. I don't know if you all know how the process of a book works, so I'll take this chance to give you the rundown.

A book from start to finish:

1) Come up with brilliant idea
2) Research
3) Plot
4) Research
5) Plot
6) Outline (this one is optional. I, for one, am an outliner!)
7) Draft
8) Draft
9) Draft
10) Draft
11) Draft...this is maybe 6 or 8 months
12) Rewrite
13) Rewrite
14) Rewrite
15) Rewrite
16) Rewrite
17) Rewrite (A writer friend of mine always said, "A good book is not written. It's rewritten." I always HATED
hearing that....Another 2 months spent here
18) Send book into editor
19) Take a short break...and begin at #1 again on next book
20) Revision letter from editor (I suppose there are people that don't get these, but I'm DEFINITELY not one of them.)
21) Revise
22) Revise
23) Revise
24) Revise
25) Revise....ah, another 3 months
26) Send in the revised manuscript
27) Wait
28) Wait
29) Wait
30) Wait...waiting is a big part of publishing. I picture my editor receiving twelve 400-page manuscripts in the same week, all of us authors clamoring, "Read me!! Read me!!"
31) Now, this is the part where ifyou're REALLY LUCKY, you do NOT get another revision letter. Hopefully, your editor tells you, "Wow! The manuscript looks great. I'm going to send it to copy editing." This has NEVER happened to me, but a girl can dream. In my case, set current manuscript aside (somewhere around phase #6 or #7) and return to #21 on this manuscript. Maybe this time you can do it in 6 weeks.
32) Eventually, you get the revision right and the book goes to copy editing. The copy editor line edits the book for style changes, consistency and clarity as well as punctuation and grammar. I don't know who does this job, but it is someone willing to mark EVERY SINGLE little error, remove every extra comma, change God Damn to goddamn in EVERY spot in the book and make note of every time I change the way I write "back-up." "Back up" and "backup" all get changed to "back-up". The copy editor also reminds me when I've changed a character's mother's name from Pamela to Susan somewhere in the middle of the book! Oops!
33) Once the copy editor is done, I get the book back and I go through every change to say "yeah" or "ney." Mostly, I just amaze over how many different ways I find write the same word. And did you know there's no comma in "Oh, God?" I thought for sure there was a comma there. I also write a dedication and acknowledgements now, straining not to forget anyone who helped with the book.
34) Next, I send the copyedits back in and the book goes to page proofs. Page proofs are when it is set on the page to look like a book but it's still unbound. This is where I mail copies to all my really anal friends who always find the typos. You can NOT underestimate the importance of anal friends. I'm very careful about this now....I learned the hard way. When the page proofs came for my second book, RUTHLESS GAME, I was so excited! I started reading. On page 6, the character, Alex, looks up at "the clock on her dash" and I ALMOST DIED. The "L" was missing from the word "CLOCK"! AHHH!! I thought, "Oh GOD! This isn't that type of book!!!" So, if you ever find an Advanced Readers Copy of RUTHLESS GAME, check out the "cock on her dash". Page 6.
35) At this point, while my VERY anal friends and I are reading for typos, the publisher's art department is SLAVING away on the cover art. When I get the cover of the book, I'm always THRILLED. Looking at how they've depicted the book, seeing the title and my name, the book feels real. Plus, the cover is like a gift because it requires almost NOTHING from me!!!
36) Not long after the cover art is done, the publisher prints Advanced Readers Copies or "ARCs". These go to booksellers, newspapers and reviewers to hopefully get some good coverage on the book.
37) I send my final edits in and once those final changes are made, the book goes to print.
38) YEAH!! I'm done.

WAIT! I FORGOT. I'm still drafting the next book. Head down, I get back to work, somewhere around #9!