Musings On...Paper

...And by that I mean, musings about paper.  Because as you know, this ain't paper. Far from it. Paper, in the sense of blogging, has become merely a metaphor for writing stuff down.

What has me musing on paper is that last week, I broke down and bought a Kindle. It hasn't arrived yet. And I'm really looking forward to having it, reading on it, NOT carrying around 800-page hardcover tomes ever again.  Or at least, not if I can possibly help it.

I have resisted buying an e-reader for...oh, as long as there have been e-readers. I was waiting. For the ultimate do-everything device. For the price to come down.  For...I don't know, exactly. To be sure that e-readers were here to stay, I guess.

I'm not waiting anymore.  Because I truly do believe that e-readers are here to stay.  And that got me thinking about way back years and years ago when I bought my first computer.  It was a DOS computer.  If there was Internet then, I sure hadn't heard of it.

It was a big step for me, to leave my IBM Selectric behind.  I thought it would be so difficult.  But you know what?  It was beyond easy.  And it made my writing life so much smoother.  So much less about Wite-out and carbon copies and having two weeks to type up a clean copy of my completed manuscript once I was through with the first, second, third--and beyond--drafts.

Many other authors I know do a lot of editing on paper.  Not me.  From that first computer, I never print it out until it's ready to slip down the chute to New York--and the last few years, I don't print it out at all.  I email it in attachment.  Slowly, the paper phases of the editing process are disappearing.  The work goes back and forth between me and my publisher mostly electronically.

And it's great.  Since novels are not about the medium but about the content, I look forward to the day when there will be no paper involved in this process at all.  I used to find it scary--books without paper.

But more and more, I find it exciting.  Good.  Right.

Experiments in Back Cover Copy

Soo....

Between the usual nervous breakdowns, I decided to try and write my own back cover copy to put up on my website for my December book, EXPECTING THE BOSS'S BABY.  No, I did not do this just for fun.  I did it because for various reasons, I did not have access to the back cover copy as of yet, though I had copied an image of the front from B&N.com that was usable for my website.  And I already had the first chapter up in the Excerpts area of my site.

I wanted to put up the cover and I didn't want to wait any longer and it just seemed wrong to put up a cover without some kind of book summary, which the back cover copy pretty much is--along with being a teaser designed to tempt readers to put down their hard-earned cash.

Solution: Write my own.  I did.  This is the result:

MARRIAGE AND A BABY?
NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

Billionaire adventurer Dax Girard needs a capable assistant, not another girlfriend. So he’s made himself a promise to keep his relationship with Zoe Bravo strictly business.

Former free spirit Zoe Bravo loves her new job. And she plans to keep it. And that means there’ll be no office romance between her and her hunky boss.

Too bad she can’t stop thinking about him in a way that is so much more than only professional. And Dax is having the same problem. He can’t get his new assistant off his mind. Something’s gotta give. And when it does, Zoe and Dax will end up dealing with much more than they bargained for….

                                                         ***

Okay, not brilliant.  But workmanlike.  I put it up on the "read more" page for this book on my website.

Then I got a PDF back-and-front version of the cover from my publisher.  Here is the actual back cover copy:

“SEX IS ABSOLUTELY
OFF THE TABLE.”

So this was Dax Girard’s hiring policy. Well, it might not be conventional—but then again, all admin-assist-wannabe Zoe Bravo  wanted was a job. And her prospective boss, Dax Girard, was so gorgeous that he’d clearly had to beat them off with a stick before. So she calmly agreed to the mogul’s terms—even throwing in a fake fiancé for good measure! A strictly hands-off policy was fine with her.…

But was it fine with him? Because the more no-strings-attached Dax swore he was as immune to Zoe as he was to your average beautiful woman, the more he started envisioning a future that had her in it. And, in nine months, a little someone else, as well.
                                                                    ***

I totally love it.  And am completely humbled.  I think from now on, when possible, I'll stick to just writing the books.

Help! Everything's Changing--and Not in a Good Way!

First off, I do have some good news:  I did get that proposal finished--the one I mentioned in my last post?  I not only got it finished.  The lovely editor on the project has already approved it.  I even started the book that will grow out of that proposal.

Started.  That's the operative word.  Because I can't seen to get all that far along, and the reason is that this book is part of what we call in the romance biz, a continuity.  A continuity book is one where the publishing house provides what we call a "bible."  That's the basic info about what the story will be like and who the characters are.  The author then takes the basic info and makes her own story from it.  A continuity is always a series of books.  As a rule, each of these books in the series is written by a different author.

Issue here: basic info.  It keeps changing.  There are many really good reasons that it does, because my hero is the brother of two other heroes from other books written in 2009 by two other authors.  Those authors changed their "bible" to make better stories.  They even agreed together on the changes they would make.  And then, as so often happens in life, agreements were either forgotten or math errors were made as to ages of characters and what happened when.  All this, I must tell you, was done in good faith by everyone.

Then we add in the fact that we're kind of pushing it scheduling-wise on this particular branch of the continuity.  The books are very successful and the publisher wants more so we're going ahead with another six books by another six authors before the past six books are all on the stands.  This creates no end of trouble for the editor writing the new "bible" and also for the first book in the new series--written by moi.

All that to say, the new "bible" is not ready yet, though my book is due way too soon.  I have trouble writing my book without stats and backstories to agree on.  I'm just funny that way.

Yes, I realize that this is my opportunity to relax and go with the flow instead of being such an anal control freak.  And I am relaxing.  I am.  I really, really, am...

What's that screaming sound? Do you hear screaming....??!!

Displacement Activities

I LOVE to fool around.  As in whiling away the hours when I should be...oh, you know.  Working?

Today, instead of finishing my proposal, I...

Did my workout (I know I'm into serious work avoidance when I would rather exercise than work.)

Called England to beg a lovely woman who edits Harlequin Historicals to judge the final round of my OKRWA chapter's Finally a Bride contest.  She said yes.  As I mentioned, she was lovely.

Watched a tree trimmer and his crew trim the big oak in my front yard.  It looks fabulous, that tree.

Tried a new recipe for cooking skinless, boneless chicken breasts prior to trying a new recipe for chicken chilaquiles, which is a chicken, salsa verde and corn tortilla casserole.

Wrote many emails.

Posted here.  Fooled around on facebook.

Worked on my schedule for updating my website and turning in content for my e-newsletters for the next year and a half.

Considered learning how to play solitaire.  I feel I won't truly excel at displacement activities until I learn to play a few computer and online games.

Looked on Amazon to see if any new covers have come up for books I wrote.  Sometimes the foreign edition covers really amuse me.  Like this one...

Because the heroine is blond in the book and maybe two months pregnant at the end of the book.  And, well, it's a Christmas book.  Not so much as a festive swag in evidence here.  I do like a happy pregnant woman, however, and the woman here certainly appears to be beyond ecstatic.  And don't get me wrong.  I love that I get a lot of foreign editions and am grateful for every single one!

Okay, back to work.  Really.  Seriously....